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Friday, October 30, 2009 01:15 PM
Prices shoot up down under
Home Turf encourages readers to dash off missives from the real estate markets where they live, and recently Oliver Amiel answered the call with harrowing tales from the area around Melbourne, Australia.
Amiel is an ex-pat Canadian who’s thinking of moving back to this country - partly because the goal of owning a house is so hard to achieve in that part of the world.
He lives in Mansfield, which is not far from the big city of Melbourne.
People who have seen Australian reality television may have seen the scenes that Amiel describes, where houses are sold at live auction.
Amiel says every house, unless it’s under foreclosure, is sold that way.
“People walk up to the house on the day and the realtor begins the auction there on the sidewalk in front of the house. Rash decisions are made in the heat of the moment.”
Amiel says most participants will have walked around the house but won’t have inspected the property thoroughly.
“This procedure has led to massively blown-out price rises and many disappointments.”
Amiel says houses in Melbourne have shot up in price by about 40 or 50 per cent in the six years he’s been there.
Speculation is rampant and many people view real estate as a short term profit-making venture, not a long-term home and investment.
The problem is compounded, he adds, because the real estate industry in Melbourne promotes the single-storey dwelling with a backyard as the ideal. Urban sprawl is excessive.
“There seems to be a real aversion to higher density living like you’d find in Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal.”
There’s another reason Amiel gets “all cosmic angsty” when he thinks about settling: The dry climate that brings water shortages and bush fires to parts of Australia is starting to seem more like an annual season than a rare phenomenon.
So for now Amiel is astonished at the relative bargains listed in Montreal. He has seen some properties on the plateau with asking prices below $300,000. An equivalent property in a similar neighbourhood down under would be pushing 7 figures.
Maybe in a few years, he says, he’ll land in Montreal and realize his goal of owning a home.
Link to this postFriday, October 23, 2009 04:04 PM
Low inventory leaves Toronto buyers scrambling
House sales continue apace in Toronto.
My husband and I went so see a pleasant-but-tired property last night and the agent enlisted to show it to us was standing on the front porch when we pulled up precisely on schedule.
Meanwhile, two rival agents had gotten out of their cars at the same time and were converging on the house.
Monday, October 19, 2009 10:50 AM
Has a backlash begun?
Paul Johnston planted a “for sale” sign in the lawn of a three-bedroom house in Toronto's west end recently and immediately had hordes of people filing through to view the property.
Based on the buzz and the eye-catching asking price of $669,000, the agent for Right at Home Realty expected about five bids at the offer deadline. Instead, there were two.
Witness the downside of the rampant bidding wars that have erupted in the big cities recently, says Johnston, who reckons that buyers are starting to rebel.
Thursday, October 8, 2009 04:51 PM
What happened to the buyer's market?
Many readers are finding the current housing market melee vexing: People are losing out to bully offers, contemplating entering the competition or just wondering when the fracas is going to end.
Conflagrations are breaking out across the country: A shortage in the number of houses listed for sale is leading to bidding wars in several cities, including Toronto, Montreal, St. John's, Saint John, Moncton, Edmonton, Calgary, North and West Vancouver, and Victoria.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 10:43 AM
Hot markets make for hard choices: Updated
The real estate market in Toronto has gone wild this week.
The house I mentioned in my last post - the one that hadn’t been updated since I Love Lucy was on the air - sold for more than $1-million, which was about $250,000 above the asking price.
I’m hearing lots of anecdotes about other properties in the city which have sold within hours. Bully offers abound. Vancouver and other cities are blistering too.
Lots more to come.
*****
Thursday, September 10, 2009 12:10 PM
A logjam in listings
Jimmy Molloy is looking at Toronto's housing market and seeing a “logjam” right now.
Some homeowners still have their jobs, they're feeling confident about the future, and they'd like to move up to a bigger house or a better neighbourhood.
“But they can't find anything to buy,” says Molloy, who is an agent with Chestnut Park Real Estate Ltd.
Friday, September 4, 2009 02:56 PM
Forget the house, treat yourself!
It's amazing how profoundly the “wealth effect” works on the psyches of homeowners.
When people saw the value of their houses climbing at a dizzying pace, they lavished money on their prized asset - treating the living room to silk drapes, say, or the bedroom to a new chaise.
Thursday, July 16, 2009 05:36 PM
Cottages are a discretionary sale
Lots of people in Canada would welcome a heat wave about now - Paul Crammond more than most.
“Buying a cottage is so psychological,” says the real estate agent at Chestnut Park in Port Carling, Ont.
Crammond took me on a tour around the heart of the big lakes in Muskoka this week. It’s still jacket weather but at least the sun was shining.
Friday, July 10, 2009 04:45 PM
A relieved renter in Calgary
It's good to hear from people in different parts of the country about how they are coping with the tumult of buying and selling houses.
Unfortunately, in the case of Nicole from Calgary, she's encountered a bit of rotten luck.
When we last heard from Nicole (not her real name - she asked me to keep that confidential), she was wondering whether she should jump into the real estate market or continue to share a rental condo with a roommate.
The availability of low interest rates and a need for more space made buying a condo of her own seem very tempting. But taking advantage of a sweet deal on rent in order to more aggressively pay off student loans was appealing too.
Readers weighed in for and against but the advice was for naught: Nicole was recently laid off from her job as an associate at a Calgary law firm.
Needless to say, she's awfully glad she hadn't bought a place in the meantime.
But she's also frustrated because she expects that her return to work will coincide with a general pick-up in the economy. That means interest rates will likely be rising too.
She is philosophical, however: “I do feel fortunate that I'm not as badly off as a lot of people who got laid off and have families, mortgages AND loans.”
So for now she is content to stay on the sidelines.
Meanwhile, legions of Calgarians have come off the sidelines. The Canadian Real Estate Association has pointed out that the most expensive markets in the country have also been the busiest in recent weeks.
In Calgary, seasonally-adjusted sales jumped 25 per cent in May compared with April.
But Nicole probably won't regret putting her plans on hold for a few more months if a Royal LePage Real Estate Services forecast proves accurate.
This week the real estate company predicted that Calgary's housing market will likely remain choppy.
With the oil and gas industry struggling through the economic downturn, the housing market has been on the decline since 2008 after a strong run-up through the first years of the decade.
The market seemed to be stabilizing in the first quarter, Royal LePage says, but the second quarter saw price fluctuations across all types of housing.
With that backdrop, Royal LePage is predicting more price declines this year.
@CarolynIreland on Twitter
Friday, June 26, 2009 11:41 AM
Is your home your sanctuary?
Despite some rocky months in the real estate market, Canadians have not become disgusted or disenchanted with home ownership.
That’s the conclusion of a study commissioned by Genworth Financial Canada.
The national survey, conducted this spring by Environics Research Group, asked if owning a home provides a greater sense of emotional well-being and security. Eighty-four per cent said it does. And 85 per cent fall into the camp that says “even though home ownership may mean more work and effort,” they’d rather own than rent.
Home Turf Contributors
Carolyn Ireland
Carolyn Ireland joined the Globe & Mail in 1990 as a reporter in Report on Business. She has covered technology, stock investing and real estate, and emphasizes that her arrival on those beats has nothing whatsoever to do with the subsequent bursting of any bubbles. Her best real estate move was buying a tumble-down hovel in Toronto in 1996.