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The Homes That Gave Up: What Expired Listings Reveal About Real Estate in 2025
In real estate, there’s a quiet heartbreak called the expired listing. A homeowner stages, scrubs, paints, hides their life in the oven, and lives in an endless state of “show-home readiness.” Then—sixty, ninety, one-hundred-twenty days later—the listing expires, unsold. The dream doesn’t crash; it just quietly times out. From early August to the end of…
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Pay down the mortgage or Play the stock market? That’s the $200,000 question
Every so often, a client calls with a question that makes me think, “Now that’s a nice problem to have.” Recently, someone reached out after receiving a $200,000 inheritance. Their question: “I’ve got a $400,000 mortgage on my home. Should I invest this in the stock market or pay down my mortgage?” Let’s break it…
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Durham Rentals 2025: The Lease You Could Do
Finding a rental in 2025 should be simple. You find the place, sign the lease, and move in. Easy, right? Not exactly. We recently worked with two tenants who had everything landlords dream of: excellent credit, solid employment, glowing rental history. And yet, the hardest part wasn’t finding a place—it was running the gauntlet of…
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Tariffs and Real Estate Sales: Playing the Long Game
It has been quite a year. The administration in the USA changed on January 20th. Immediately there was a threat of tariffs on all Canadian products that was slated to begin on February 1st. As we approached the first of February, the tariffs were paused until the beginning of March. You would have to live…
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Choose Local (Even when deciding on a Realtor to work with)
This is a story about a home and 3 agents. Let me set the stage. Over the past week, I placed a “fixer-upper” bungalow on the market. It was something that would work for an investor to buy and create an apartment in the lower level. (Legal or not.) The home was in poor condition…
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Parents Helping Kids Buy Homes Today
With a career spanning almost 4 decades I have worked with clients as young as 18 and as old as 98. One thing I have experienced, is when a homeowner is in the 65+ range, they start to look at where they will direct their assets. These can be their personal residence, rental properties or…
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Small Changes – Big Impact
Over the past decade prices for homes have spiked. The average detached home in Durham Region was selling for $444,000 a decade ago and currently the same homes are selling for $991.000. When values increase as dramatically as they have the results are damaging to Buyers. Add to this mortgage rules that lessen the borrowing…
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The September numbers are out and are all over the place.
When I review the previous month’s selling statistics, I do my best to use the KISS principles. (Keep it simple, stupid) It is easy to go down a rabbit hole trying to find nuanced changes; however, I feel when many people do that, they are looking to prove a point rather than interpret what is…
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How to Hire… Anyone
Recently I was in need of a local company to install some eavestroughing at my home and started my search by asking a few friends who they may know that I could trust. Before we go any further, trust is a big word when hiring anyone… a plumber, electrician, contractor, financial advisor or heck even…
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How Low Can Rates Go?
Several things happened in 2022. The beginning of the slowdown in the economy started when the Bank of Canada (BOC) raised interest rates 10 times over 10 months. In 2022 we started the year with the BOC lending rate set at .25%. When lenders offered a variable rate mortgage they would add 1 or 1.5%…
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