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 [...]
It seems appropriate to kick this blog off with a tip to Busta Rhymes and his pulse pounding hit "Gimme Some More". Between this song and his meaty supporting role in "Finding Forrester" (who hasn't pined to see Busta and Sean Connery in the same movie), Busta was on top of the world. But just as quickly as he rose he soon fell, flying too close to the sun with his blingy wings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHHT7dTmw8U Now for the matter at hand. [...]
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%!! [...]
I will get right to the point with this article - I hate bully offers. In fact I despise them, almost as mush as I despise the TV show 19 Kids And Counting or Teva style sandals. As an agent who spends alot of time working with buyers I wish they would just go away forever, or better yet be beaten and tarred and left in the mid day sun. Recently a colleague of mine had buyers interested in a [...]
Making an offer in a bidding war scenario (ie multiple competing offers) involves many moving parts (closing date, conditions etc), but in the end (with all things being equal) it usually comes down to the number. Coming up with the right number again involves several factors, but once we determine what our number is I always tell my clients the same thing - go with your best and get the deal done, and keep it simple - like the elegant [...]
Inevitably the question comes… “How many houses should I see before I buy one? How many houses should I see?” I hear this all the time, especially from first time buyers. There really is no right answer to the question – some buyers will offer on the first house they see, and other buyers take a more measured approach and need to see more. I have no problem with doing it either way, and I am happy to work with [...]