Let’s get honest for a few minutes. Our market is shifting, and we don’t know how long the shift will hang around. It might be a few months like we saw in 2017 or a 13-year drought after the housing market went sideways in 1991. However, there is some data that can shed light on understanding the market if you are planning on buying a home or selling one in this market. A good quote a...Read More

There is a tie-in to Real Estate if you stay with me for a few minutes. In February if you decided to buy one Netflix share you would have paid $457. Today, you would pay $194. If someone suggested that you would pay a higher amount you would laugh. The prices for Real Estate are down since peaking in February, not as much as Netflix, and if you are a Buyer, you would be crazy to think of paying ...Read More

Did I grab your attention with that headline? Headlines exist to cause a reaction, and over the past few weeks I have had 2 experiences with Agents offering on homes I had on the market for sale, where the Agent narrative mirrored was being shared in the media. The first was with a property I had listed for $1.7M with the comparable properties indicating the value range to be in the $2M range. We...Read More

  Let’s take a quick look back in time to see where the values have been before we look at where they are currently. I began my career selling Real Estate in 1986. So long ago that the Real Estate Board does not have individual statistics from that prehistoric age. When I started our three communities had about 250,000 residents. We currently have over 400,000. The average price for h...Read More

There is a common saying in business; “Success Leaves Clues.” What this means is that to be successful in any endeavour, rather than re-inventing the wheel, if you research successful people and businesses you can come to understand why they, in such competitive environments succeed when others did not. I joke (on a pretty regular basis) that I have a crystal ball, however, it is rarel...Read More

The mortgage rates have jumped up over the past month by more than ½%. How is this change affecting the market? The easy way to look at it is to see how much the costs of carrying a mortgage have increased. Another approach when you lean into the question a bit deeper that might surprise you is that rising rates may have positive and unintended side effects. Looking at the price of se...Read More

Can Buyers finally catch a break? This week’s blog is focused on what has happened in the previous seven days. There are a lot of different things that are impacting the Real Estate market currently so let’s take a few minutes to see what is happening that is distracting Buyers and Sellers in Durham Region. The news items that are drawing attention away from Real Estate over the past ...Read More

Real estate has been the “talk of the town” for several years now. I was ordering a coffee this week and overheard a couple talking about an offer that they had submitted and were fingers crossed they were successful. You can’t go anywhere without someone mentioning Real Estate. Real Estate flourishes when rates are low, and confidence is up. If you read some of the media report...Read More

It was 2012 and my partner Wendy Starr was selling Real Estate in Phoenix, Arizona. She had an experience that is as relevant today as it was then. She was dealing with a Canadian investor making an offer on a townhome in Grayhawk, a golf course community in Scottsdale. The property was 1,650 sq ft and was a bank-owned property, called a foreclosure. In layman's terms, the bank was selling th...Read More

I recently sold a home in Oshawa and the story behind another similar home in the neighbourhood had me digging into how “flips” work. I thought I would share my research into what happened to the home down the street from the one I was asked to help sell. I am going to keep the details about streets and neighborhoods in the dark, meaning only to give my readers a glimpse into using &ld...Read More