I find it fascinating to grab a beer with the veteran agents in our office, the agents 25 plus years in. They often speak wistfully of the “good old days”. That glorious time (for them) before computers when new listings were literally sheets in a book, fax machines were revolutionary and deals got done in bars with handshakes. With sadness they speak of this time, as they struggle to understand the direction our industry (and society) is heading in. I [...]
If nothing else 2020 has been consistent. Much like warm beer, cold french fries and wet hockey equipment 2020 has been a consistent drag, providing humankind with repeated blows to the nether regions. 2020 has also been a huge bummer for celebrity deaths, taking beloved icons like Alex Trebek, Sean Connery, Eddie Van Halen and the dude who played Deebo in Friday. But what 2020 has ultimately proved unequivocally is that the Toronto real estate market remains an unstoppable force. [...]
Overheard recently at Starbucks. Exasperated Buyer (loser of 8 bidding wars): I’ve had it. My wife is 7 months pregnant and I am sick of spending every Saturday with you. I want to bid $1.8 on the semi on Prust Ave. Well Meaning (but increasingly desperate) Agent: You mean the one listed at $1.2, with the leaky basement and knob and tube?? Exasperated Buyer (loser of 8 bidding wars): Yep, that’s the one. Well Meaning (but increasingly desperate) Agent: Ok. [...]
Well, America actually did it. They did it. My beloved America went and left the biggest turd in the toilet bowl you could ever imagine. Or in the words of Michael Moore “the biggest f%&k you in the history of America”. Probably the history of mankind. And now I have to stare at that god awful hairdo for another 4 years. I will not wade into the politics at all in this little entry, but suffice to say as the [...]
The meteoric increase in real estate prices across the GTA has certainly been well documented, in some cases ad nauseam with certain media outlets. Being in the business, it seems every week I have some variation on the same conversation, usually “Holy crap, did you see what 123 Main St. sold for last night? Those people must be nuts!!” Every night new sale records are set, with no end in sight. The poor buyers have the deck stacked against them [...]
I’m not going to sugar coat things in this Spring market of 2016. For buyers it is certainly the toughest market that I personally have seen, and I am sure many other agents would say the same thing. But even in this insanely hot market a buyer can sometimes catch a (relative) break, and there are still times when you just never know… Recently I found myself in bidding wars on consecutive nights with two different buyers. The first property [...]
In this blog I am going to talk about pocket listings, and how they are a real estate occurrence that can be mutually beneficial to both buyers and sellers, but particularly buyers (as we will see later). A “pocket” listing, in the simplest layman terms, is when we have a client that wants to sell but DOES NOT want to list their house on MLS. Now, at this point it would be totally reasonable (and expected) to ask why the [...]
It seems like the topic of bully offers just keeps coming up in this blog, and believe me when I say I am sick of writing about it, much like I'm sure Tom Petty is sick to death of playing "Free Fallin" every night to a crowd of paunchy middle-aged sad sacks. But the reality is that it has become sadly inevitable, so here we go. This blog is (as usual) being written with mixed feelings. On the one hand [...]
The Upper Beach just blew the f%*k up. There is no other way to put it, no more eloquent words. It blew up real good, like the American Embassy during the fall of Saigon or the Hindenburg over the sky of New Jersey. A street sale record was set (by a staggering $194,000), north of Kingston Rd shot up to prime Beach status, and in the process smashed buyers' hopes were left in the billowing smoke. There was also plenty [...]
"Can you afford not to buy?" It is a question that is coming up with my buyers over and over again, and as always it is being driven by extremely low inventory. The market report for March told a great tale for sellers, but a grim one for buyers. In March the average sale price across the GTA was $614,000 - which is 10% HIGHER than the March 2014 average of $558,000. Think about that for a second - 10%!! [...]