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Immigration, Inflation and Real Estate Cycles
Looking back to the late 1980s and some of the leaders in Real Estate I admired, one man constantly comes up. Guy Leblanc. Picture a chubby, bald, middle-aged man who wore a white suit and drove a white Cadillac. You get the picture. However, he was very wise. What I learned from him can be illustrated…
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The Current State of Real Estate
Durham Region Real Estate November 2022. Last year the talk around water coolers, hockey rinks, and bars in Ontario was about how we could find out way out of the Real Estate crisis we found ourselves in. Jump to November/22 and guess what? The market has shifted, and we are still in a Real Estate Crisis. Real Estate is…
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The difference between a Flipper and a Homeowner
Over the past decade, we have seen new home sites open their sales offices with long lineups and almost immediately install “sold out” signs. I remember walking around downtown Toronto and seeing long lines, finding out that a new condo building was selling condos that were not set to close for a couple of years.…
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I’ve got a secret. Promise not to tell?
How important is confidentiality when it comes to the sale of Real Estate? For some, it is an “iron clad” rule never to be broken, and to others, well the lines are a bit blurry. Let’s go back to the market of the early 1990s and review a sale I had worked on. The Seller had his…
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House prices are coming down, why are rents going up?
Housing prices have declined since February 2022 but guess what? The price of renting a home or apartment has jumped similar to how the values of homes increased during the pandemic. To help clarify why rents have risen it helps to look as an investor does when considering buying a property to offer as a rental. The average price…
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Neighbours and Developers – A Love/Hate Relationship
A few weeks ago, I went to a local councillors debate here in Durham Region. It doesn’t matter which community as I felt the debate topics covered issues and talking points found in most towns. Especially, with candidates having limited or no knowledge of how the municipal act controls much of what goes on when it comes to, well…
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Where the Real Estate Market in Durham Region was 2 years ago
Think back to September 2020…. Lockdowns, masks, hand sanitizers, restaurants doing take out and delivery with no indoor dining. It was a crazy time and thank goodness we are past the restrictions and the fear of the pandemic. Another crazy part of the pandemic is what happened to Real Estate in Durham region over the past 24 months. When our…
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Hurricanes, Insurance and Tenants
The big news over the past week has been the destruction caused by something named “Fiona.” The hurricane devastated parts of our east coast as it moved north along the USA coastline. I was speaking with a person who hails from Newfoundland, and she shared that her parents purchased a property in Port Aux Basques to use as a…
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Fence-Sitting? Time to Jump
Rates are up. Inflation is up. Uncertainty is up. Why would anyone consider buying now? This could be the best opportunity for a Buyer in the past year to buy a home. Let’s dig in and find out why. In February, the average home in Durham was selling for $1,209,000 and as of the end…
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When Strategies Work Against You
We recently had an experience that caused quite a bit of conversation and introspection. What came out of the experience was a short list of “things that sounds sexy to a Seller, yet do not serve them.” The experience that had us looking at how different strategies work and how what worked before, is not…
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