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How Big of a Deal is a 1/4% Rate Cut?
Let’s be frank – given the fact that rates jumped about 6% in 10 increases, how much will a ¼ or 1/2% rate cut do for Real Estate Buyers and Sellers? In a nutshell…. a lot! If we look at the average home in Oshawa, Whitby and Clarington and given the average selling prices, we…
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Show Me the Money
It seems like chat around the office water cooler or photocopier always seems to revolve around Real Estate. A question that commonly comes up is that given the state of our economy in Canada, “Where is all of the money coming from for people to buy houses?” Mortgage, loans and lines of credit rates are…
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The Home with the ’12-Carat Gold’ Nails
There is a joke between realtors when it comes to a home that is listed for sale dramatically higher than it’s market value. We joke that is must have “gold nails.” Even in a market when most of what is listed for sale is selling there is always that one home, and we ran into…
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Homes in Durham Region — Where are the Buyers Coming From?
It has been 3 weeks since the Bank of Canada decreased their lending rate by ¼ percent and thought it would be a good exercise to see how the market has reacted. From Whitby to Clarington there are currently 888 detached homes for sale. At the beginning of June, the inventory was 725, an increase…
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What Upgrades Pay off?
I met with 2 groups last week, one a potential Seller and the other a Buyer I had been working with. After meeting with them, I reflected on how different the two experiences were when it came to valuing Real Estate. The first was a Buyer who I had been working with for the past…
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Has $599,900 become the most common asking price in Oshawa?
Yes, we appear to be heading back “there.” “Where?” you ask…. Well back to the craziness of placing homes on the market at ridiculous low prices and having Buyers bid the prices up. In the past 10 days there have been 50 homes sold in Oshawa. Of those homes sold, 9 were listed under $700,000…
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Durham Region Real Estate Rental Report
I spend much of my time reading reports on Real Estate and most articles and blog posts discuss Buyers, Sellers and the state of the market as it relates to mortgage rates. What I rarely see is information about how the rental market is doing in Durham Region. I thought it would be worthwhile to…
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Are we in a Buyer’s Market or a Seller’s Market?
I had a conversation with a newer agent over the weekend who did their best to convince me that we are in a full-on Buyer’s market. The number of homes for sale is up, prices are flat, and the selling times have increased. I simply nodded thinking to myself, “this agent may have never seen a true Buyer’s market.”…
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A Conversation about Renting vs. Owning
I had a chat with a friend over the weekend who shared with me how owning a property was for him, not an option. Not because he could not afford one, but because he felt that owning Real Estate would impact his life in not so positive ways. One thought was that by owning a…
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How Can I Make $4,500 from a $1,000 Investment?
When I started my career in the 1980s, one of the central themes for Buyers was to work toward paying the mortgage off. I remember mortgage document “burning parties” where a group of friends would get together and celebrate a mortgage being paid off and getting calls from a homeowner who shared that they had…
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