“Wrong way on a one-way track.” - The legendary Soul Asylum. One of the most surprising developments of the Pandemic has been the unstoppable price growth of GTA real estate. Imagine fire on a gasoline trail with some kerosene thrown in for good measure, and that’s how fast prices have gone up. With the benefit of hindsight we now know why and how we got here, but I can tell you that on the ground level this unprecedented price growth [...]
In this entry I want to explore one of the more treacly, and in some instances controversial, practices in real estate. I’m referring, of course, to the good old letter to the seller from the hopeful buyer. These letters almost always are essentially the same (and I’ve read dozens of them). A nice couple gives a bit of background information about themselves and their jobs, rave about how much they love the house, and then conclude by saying how excited [...]
“The best fighter is never angry.” - Lao Tzu “Do or do not. There is no try.” - Yoda 2021 wasn’t kind on many levels, and that was particularly evident if you were attempting to buy real estate in the GTA. It often resembled a piece of meat being dropped into a loaded piranha tank, a frothing stew of blood and guts. That’s what happens when you put 10 people in a bar with only a single beer available. It [...]
I was going through some of my old blog archives the other day, and I came across an entry from September of 2016 that caught my eye. Entitled “Holy Bungalow!!”, it detailed the meteoric rise in sale prices of bungalows on Lankin Ave in East York. I had made this the topic of a blog at the time because we had just had a hugely successful sale on the street, and to top it off the sale was for the [...]
Dearest Mr. Debt, You have been with me as long as I can remember. Even though my parents gave you the cold shoulder, let’s just consider it a generational diss. You will always have a special place in my heart. At first things were rocky between us. We were first introduced in my early twenties when I obtained my first credit card, to embark on a career playing online blackjack. Things turned out as badly as could have have been [...]
I always advise my buyer clients that purchasing a property isn’t easy. The reality is that it’s hard, damn hard. Imagine trying to hammer in a nail with a limp fettuccine noodle and multiply that by 100, and that’s how hard it can be. So when my wife and I personally entered the buyer pool earlier this year to find a cottage for our family, we did so with a mix of excitement and anxiety as we knew full well [...]
The Market Watch stats have come in for the GTA for the month of September, and like the titular Green Day song it’s an emotional roller coaster, and ultimately a tear jerker. The stats are insane, difficult to comprehend and to my eyes deeply concerning. Allow me to present the meatiest morsels: Active listings DOWN 49.4% vs September of last year. New listings DOWN 34% vs September of last year. Average sale price UP 18.3% vs September of last year [...]
In a perfect, utopian society everything would move forward smoothly. People would do what they are supposed to do, and say what they are supposed to say. Pandemics would be relegated to the history books, and kumbaya would be sung around campfires across the world. Manly men could even admit they like 90 Day Fiance and the awesomeness that is Big Ed, without fear of extreme derision and scorn... Governments would deliver on their promises to provide affordable housing AND [...]
It’s Election time and the ridiculous political statements about “fixing” the housing market are flying. Politicians, and articles like this, always miss the point. 1) They always focus on the DEMAND side and not SUPPLY. Real estate is a free market, and when demand far outstrips supply prices rise dramatically. That’s Simple economics, like a kid with a lemonade stand. If a problem is perceived, the only solution is to increase supply. 2) There is nothing to fix. Toronto (and [...]
I am writing this as a companion piece to my previous entry, “The Death Of The Open House”. Initially I was going to title this entry “The Death Of The In-Person Offer Presentation”, but then I thought writing about death too much might get depressing. Also, the open house blog seemed to strike a nerve and a couple of unexpected things happened. The first was that several people responded to it, which in and of itself was surprising because it [...]