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REALM: GET ACCESS TO NEW LISTINGS

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What do the new mortgage rules mean for you?

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So the mortgage rules just changed for the amount of a downpayment required and many people are in support of making it more difficult for first time home buyers to get into the market. Many claim that coming up with an extra $5,000 or $10,000 downpayment isn’t such a hardship. Really!? I mean really!? Does the government realize it’s the holidays and many people have turned their attention toward spending time with their families and friends? Let’s face it, many people are spending more money doing their holiday shopping. So the government, in my opinion, has kicked first-time home buyers in the Toronto market in the gut over the holidays. Merry Christmas folks! You better reign in your holiday spending and forgo that winter vacation so that you can spend an additional $5,000, $10,000 or whatever the case maybe after Feb. 15th, 2016. The alternative is, stop buying presents for your friends & family and quick go buy a property before Feb. 15th, 2016. Those don’t sound like great options for first time buyers. And to exacerbate the situation there aren’t that many properties on the market during this time of the year so not only must they buy now, but they don’t have the widest selection. Then there are the people that were already putting 10% down that don’t feel this announcement affects them. Well it actually increases the competition in the marketplace, so they will be affected too. It will be interesting to see what the next 2 months of the Toronto real estate market will look like before this deadline sets in. Check out my interview with Pat Foran from CTV News on this subject here

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When’s the best month to get a deal in real estate?

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The holidays are here and it’s a time when our waistline expands and our wallets contract. It’s also the time when SOOO many people turn their attention to their holiday shopping that they miss out one of the best shopping opportunities out there.  What’s that you may ask? Well real estate of course. There are currently OVER 400 PRICE REDUCTIONS in condos & houses on MLS right now. This means that there are a lot of people who would like to sell RIGHT NOW, before the end of the year. Guess what? The end of the year is fast approaching so it’s TIME TO MAKE A DEAL. One of my colleagues last week sold a house for $950,000 after 3 offers. I know that sounds high but if this house were on the market a month prior, it would have had at least 5 offers and sold for closer to $1.1 million. Now stay with me here, don’t get all doom and gloom about the real estate market and the high prices are coming to an end. The reason the buyer got such a deal (yes I know I just said that $950K was getting a deal) is because of the time of year. So if you’re looking for a deal, whether you’re looking to purchase a house or a condo, NOW is the time to MAKE A DEAL because the opportunity is out there RIGHT NOW. In January, everyone makes a resolution to purchase a property, then nothing comes out for a few weeks, then they all pounce on the same property driving the prices up further and making sellers extremely happy. Now if you want to follow the herd and spend more money than you need to? By all means, go for it. However if you’d like to MAKE A DEAL and buy smartly, there is a great opportunity waiting for you, RIGHT NOW. Buying a new home for the holidays? Now that’s a REAL present. Plus you’ll have time off from work to unpack and start the new year in fresh digs. Let me know what you’re looking for and I can help you find something. 

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What I’ve learned watching Million Dollar Listing

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Can we say guilty pleasure? Yes I know I look at houses all day but I love watching Million Dollar Listing New York, Los Angeles and Miami. I find all of the characters extremely entertaining. And who doesn’t love to look at all of those million dollar properties with their incredible views and pools. I chuckle at how their deals are done and sped up for the sake of the viewers. I can’t even imagine presenting my clients with a verbal offer on their home. If it’s not on paper it hasn’t happened. I also think there is something that happens to a buyer and seller when they see the numbers of an offer on paper. It makes it more real and it forces them to truly think about the number in front of them. I’ve seen people say conceptually they wouldn’t pay or accept a certain amount but when they are staring at the numbers in black and white, it’s a different story. I also love the lavish broker’s open houses these characters throw. Their party budgets seems to be in the thousands of dollars. Really! Now really? Most agent open houses aren’t quite so lavish. The agents that go above and beyond in this city tend to have samosas, a cheese or veggie tray and water and maybe Prosecco if you really want to do something special. But there are no Burning Man costume parties and models walking around for an open house. Even for the opening of pre-construction condos, parties are not that lavish. As an aside, I recently attended a pre-construction condo opening where they served pizza out of a box and water. That’s certainly no way to treat a potential buyer. I would also like to see them include more woman as agents in all of these shows. And a little more diversity couldn’t hurt either. The casts tend be predominantly Caucasian men. It would be nice if they mixed things up a little and cast a woman. Although, we see Josh Altman’s fiancé, Heather, in action the odd time, it would be nice if they gave her the same exposure as the men so that we could see more women in the show. The odd thing is, I think there are actually more women than men as real estate agents in general so it should be reflected in the shows. All that being said, I do love watching all of the Million Dollar Listing franchises. I love the houses, the cars, the great clothes and the ridiculously over the top lifestyles that we get to be exposed to.

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So your stock portfolio just dropped, now what?

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  The recent declines in the stock markets around the world have sent many people looking at their investment portfolios with grave concern. It’s dis-heartening that investors across the world in a different country can send our own North American markets into a tail spin. Fortunately this time around many investors saw the light at the end of the tunnel and instead of selling their investments and solidifying their losses, they chose to double-down and buy some deals in the marketplace. It never makes sense to sell your stocks when the market is down because then you’ll never have the opportunity to make your money back when the market comes back up again.  But wait, what if you were retired and the market stayed down for a few months and you actually needed to live off that money? Now, that decrease in your investment portfolio will affect your daily living and budgeting. But what if, you saw the writing on the wall and took some additional precautions before you retired to add one or a few investment properties to your overall portfolio so that if the stock market went down and you needed cash, you’d still have a steady stream of rental income coming in? That’s what I decided to do in 2008 when we had the last big crash, I started to think what if I had just turned 65 and the market crashed, then what. I started to build my own real estate portfolio to mitigate against any possible losses to my RRSP when I retired.  I’m happy that I have my RRSP but I am also happy that I own a few investment properties. It’s like I’m hedging my bets in retirement. And I feel a house is something more in my control. I wrote about investing in real estate as a back-up plan for your retirement in the Amazon Best-Seller, Success Today with Brian Tracy. I have joined a select group of entrepreneurs from around the world to co-author, Success Today: Common Sense but Uncommon Knowledge from ​Today’s ​Leading ​Entrepreneurs and ​Professionals to ​Help ​You ​Lead an ​Extraordinary ​Life of ​Health, ​Wealth and ​Success. You can purchase the book on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/davellesbook. Please let me know what you think and if I can help you plan your own real estate retirement portfolio.

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Having an Affair?

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Are you having an affair with the idea of living in a condo townhouse? I have recently noticed that many of my clients are determined to live in a townhouse. The allure, of course, is to live in a house that’s newer and doesn’t require any work. It’s the house that acts like a condo. No snow shoveling required. No backyard lawn to mow. Just a great patio or rooftop terrace. Your car will even have covered parking. What more could you ask for? No wonder it seems to be the number one request from my clients, lately. The townhouse allows residents to have a house in the city close to transit. The price range for townhouses can be anywhere from $300K+ to well over $1.5mill. The challenge is that townhouses on the cheaper end of the scale are so popular because they simply don’t come up for sale very often. According to TREB, the average days on market for a condo apartment in Toronto is 28 days whereas a condo townhouse is generally only 18 days.  The number of listings for condo apartments is over 16,000 while there are only 3,500 condo townhouses on the market since January.  Recently I’ve observed that many of the condo townhouses in prime locations are having offer dates and the sale prices are coming in 14%-21% of the asking price whereas condo apartments tend to come in under the asking price at 98% to list.  As people get used to living and raising their families in smaller spaces, the townhouse becomes a great option as it offers the qualities they like about houses, large, spacious, access to outdoors and offers the qualities they like about condos like having the snow removal and lawn care provided for them. I can definitely see the values of condo townhouses increasing as those who currently live in condos want to move up but don’t love the idea of moving into 100 year old house which happens to be most of the housing stock of most homes in Toronto these days. Of course the challenge with creating more condo townhouses is that the land costs are high, so it’s difficult for developers to justify building more of them. Clearly the people who live in the condo townhouses seem to enjoy them so much, they rarely come on the market so for my clients it means many bidding wars and patiently waiting for just the right one to come on the market. For those who own them, it means they have a very valuable commodity right now in the market.

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Are you bored with your surroundings?

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  Are you bored with your surroundings? You’re wondering if you should move? This advice may surprise you coming from a realtor but maybe you should re-furnish or change your accessories instead. I recently decided it was time for a change and instead of moving, I went shopping for new furniture & accessories. What a fun excuse to visit some of the cool furniture stores our city has to offer. My first visit was to Style Garage for the perfect teal couch.  Yes I said teal. The world has been white & beige far too long and its time to branch out with colour. Glorious & fabulous colour.  A friend had suggested that I check out Queen West Antiques close to Roncesvalles. I was a little sceptical at first because I’m really not that into antique furniture however I trusted her taste and thought if she’s sending me there it must have some interesting pieces. I walked in the store and immediately saw many mid century modern pieces which would work well in my home. And the best part was that you could negotiate the prices down too. Needless to say I was really impressed with the store. As they say Rome was not built in a day so it did take awhile to find all of the right pieces. With spring on its way, you’ll definitely want to freshen up your home. Painting the interior and adding new pillows and accessories is a great way to freshen things up inexpensively. I love Urban Barn, HomeSense and Bouclair as great stores to visit for accessories to freshen up your home. Carpet is another way to freshen things up. If you haven’t checked out Flor.com or their store on Cumberland, It’s time for an excursion. They offer inexpensive carpet squares which can be mixed and matched into unique patterns so you can have a one-of-a-kind carpet. They are also easy to wash making them extremely practical. Also, consider changing the accent colour in your home which can provide you with a little direction when shopping for pillows, throws and other home accessories. Happy shopping and send me pics of your finds!

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Renting is a costly mistake

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Yes I know what you’re thinking that as a realtor my advice will always be to buy vs rent, however owning something just makes sense and one only need to do the math to discover that owning something makes sense.  So let’s do some math, if you were to finance a mortgage of $800,000 using a variable rate of 2% it would cost you $3,388 per month.  If the rate goes up to 3%, it will cost you $3,786 per month. At 4%, the cost will be $4,208 per month.  For a family looking at an $800,000 mortgage, they would most likely rent a place that would cost them at least $3K, $4K or $5K per month meaning that they’ll be wasting between $36,000 – $60,000 per year instead of putting that money towards paying down principal & interest. I’m not sure why anyone would want to do that. By the time they decide to get back into the buying market, either the prices will be higher or the interest rates will be higher thereby costing them more per month to own a home no matter how you slice it.  Even if you think the market will go down, it won’t go down by more than 5% and inevitably, interest rates will rise meaning it will simply cost you more to own the same property even if prices stay the same.    I think that everyone should consider your buying instead of renting. I think renting will only cost you money in the long run. Imagine being retired and being at the mercy of paying rent? Now imagine being retired and having a home that’s fully paid off. The choice is yours and I know which one I’d choose.    

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So you want to rent for awhile, eh?

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So you want to rent for awhile, eh? I hear it all the time. People who think they can rent for awhile and wait for the market to cool off so they can buy something later when the market cools. Unfortunately none of us has a crystal ball and none of us can time the market perfectly. Yet it amazes me that many people think they can do it all the time.  No one would claim to be able to time the stock market so I’m not sure why they think they can time the real estate market.  For years we’ve heard many well educated economists predict a market crash. Yet year after year, their prediction doesn’t happen. I’m not saying that the market will only go up because we know that all markets are cyclical. But the most educated economists are continually predicting the real estate market incorrectly. What makes it worse is when they suck the general public into believing that they can time the market and rent for awhile to take advantage of an impending softening of the market.  What usually ends up happening is that they are just delaying the inevitable home purchase and the market starts to run away from them. So now they can afford even less house than they could before. So by the time they have rented for awhile, they now have to accept something smaller than what they were first looking for. I’ve seen it time and time again, that people who wait to see if the market falls end up staying out of the market and wasting more money renting. When they buy into the market, they buy in at a higher price and have lost out on the appreciation they could have had over the years. As Will Rogers once said “Don’t wait to buy land. Buy land and wait”. Real estate is something that does appreciate over the long run so getting in as early as you can makes sense. Renting to wait out the market will only cost you money.

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Beware of Short Term Renters in Your Condo Buildings

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  When I travel I love finding great places to stay on airbnb.com or vrbo.com. I’ve never stopped to think of how this short term rental phenomenon is impacting the condos in downtown Toronto. I am the president of my condo corporation and we’ve recently discovered a few units in our condo building were being rented through short term rental sites. In the condo declaration it clearly states that rental terms shorter than 6 months are not permitted. Now most people don’t read the condo declaration regularly to be concerned with all of the rules. However once the condo corporation becomes aware of the problem a terse letter will be sent to the owner/landlord in question to make them aware of the rules. If the first or second letters don’t change their behaviour than the condo corporation will have no choice but to get their lawyers.  The resulting legal bills will be charged back to the offending unit. Short-term rentals are becoming more of a problem in the city. I was recently out with clients who were complaining about the influx of new people they had started seeing in their west end condo building. I suggested that they search their address on a few short term rental web sites. Sure enough they went home and did exactly that and were shocked to learn that some of the units in their building were on kijiji being advertised as a short term rental. The short-term rental problem is affecting many of the condos in our city. These vacation renters simply do not care as much about the welfare of the building so it’s important that owners be diligent in their efforts to root out the units being used for short term rentals in their buildings. So, if you live a condo building, spend some time searching on the short term rental sites to see if any of the units in your building are being rented out, then inform your property manager and board so they can start resolving the issue.

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