Tuesday, February 16, 2010 2:24 PM EST
Real estate Darwinism
Real estate agents have no choice but to evolve if they want to stay in the business of buying and selling houses. A huge number of people have made that message clear in emails sent to my inbox or comments posted online.
One of those people is John Andrew, who thinks those readers are spot on. Andrew spends a lot of time studying these housing market forces at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. Andrew believes the Canadian Real Estate Association - which is made up of agents across the country - must open up the information on property listings to anyone who wants to look at it.
Link to this post
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 10:16 AM EST
What’s the value of a real estate agent?
What’s the value of a real estate agent?
Their level of service can range from haphazard to astonishingly complete. I can almost swear I’ve shown up at houses where the client and agent have just stepped out of the shower - together.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 12:17 PM EST
New Year, new market, new rules
One Home Turf correspondent has been back in touch to relate his good news for the New Year: The reader and his family of six are finally preparing to leave a two-bedroom rental apartment for a roomy house in Georgetown, Ont.
The cramped living quarters were sufficiently motivating to prompt the dad to sweeten his offer a couple of times and vanquish the competition.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 2:37 PM EST
Looking for bargains? Head to Hamilton
If you live in Vancouver or Toronto, and you’re having trouble getting a toe into the real estate market, consider a move to Hamilton, Ont.
There, for the price of a Vancouver tear-down, one can find a historically-designated house built in the 1880s, full of character, renovated and restored to its original brilliance. In Hamilton, this house will be on a highly-desirable street such as Ravenscliffe, Aberdeen or Markland and it will range in price from $750,000 to, in top form, $1.7-million.
Many big cities in Canada have seen a surge in sales at the top end of the real estate market – but Hamilton, Ont. isn’t one of them.
Friday, October 30, 2009 1:15 PM EDT
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.
Friday, October 23, 2009 4:04 PM EDT
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 EDT
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 4:51 PM EDT
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 EDT
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 EDT
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.
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.
