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Tortoise and Hare
Sometimes by slowing down, you get more than you dreamed of. Last week we had a very interesting story unfold. We placed a property on the market at an asking price of $850,000. The same model had sold for $820,000 at the end of 2022, so with the market a bit higher currently our target…
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Understanding Real Estate and Investment Cycles
We are 3 weeks into the 2nd quarter and the “fortune tellers,” meaning, the people who sit around tables in coffee shops, chatting in a bar over a beer or even milling about after church service are surprised that their predictions are not coming true. You might be curious what predictions… the ones predicting the…
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Revisiting Predictions – Facts vs. Headlines
I spoke with a Buyer last fall, and they shared with me that they were holding off buying until the market bottomed out. If they gathered information from headlines of the major news media outlets, the Buyer may feel they were relying on accurate information or predictions. Alas, that individual would currently be paying about…
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Go East, Young Man
Let’s talk about home prices. Crazy, expensive, unaffordable and beyond reach. If you are a Buyer looking for a detached home in Riverdale Toronto, (east of the Don Valley and south of Danforth) you would expect to pay an average of $1,714,000 to buy a home. Breaking this down, you would need a minimum of…
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Mortgage Mix-Up. Canada vs. United States
I have learned quite a bit about American mortgages living with a woman who sold Real Estate in Arizona for over a decade. We have chatted at length about the differences between mortgages here in Canada and those south of the border. One of the structural differences is that mortgages south of the border are…
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Houston, We have a Problem
Yikes. It’s mid-March and in a “typical” year this is the time Sellers begin to place their homes on the market. In fact, the surge of properties starts in the third week of February with March being one of the busiest months for Seller’s to get their homes on the market. It may seem odd,…
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Deconstructing Shocking Real Estate Headlines
Have things really changed over the past 6 months? Here is a “shocking” headline from the Toronto Star, “New report predicts that Canadian home prices could drop by 30%- or more.” This is a juicy, sensational newsflash. When people see headlines like this, they tend to fall into several camps. My favourite reply is “looks…
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Musings of a Durham Region Mortgage Broker
I had lunch with the mortgage broker I have known for years this past Friday understanding that when people think of business lunches, visions of swanky restaurants, multiple martinis and expense accounts are easy to conjure up. Alas, when you are self-employed, these lunches tend to be all about business and packed with loads of…
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Durham Region Real Estate Deja-Vu
Here is my recollection of the timeline we saw with Real Estate sales over the past few years. In 2017 we saw a drop in values after our Provincial Government implemented a foreign buyer tax. The reaction to the market was swift and brutal. From April until July 2017, values plummeted 25% in Oshawa alone.…
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Euphoria, Panic and Hope. Durham Real Estate in 2023.
Most people know what the 5 stages of grief are: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In real estate cycles there are also a set of emotions people experience during the ups and downs. Here is what the stages might look like. When it comes to Real Estate cycles there are a few parts of…
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