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How to buy a home in a scarce marketplace?

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The Toronto real estate market right has become incredibly competitive due to the lack of condo and house listings. Because the majority of condos don’t have offer dates, it means getting clients into great condos within the first couple of days of the suite hitting the market is critical. A few weeks ago I made an offer on behalf of a client for a condo townhouse in the Yonge & Eglinton area. The townhouse came on the market on Friday. I showed it to my client Saturday. Sunday we put in our offer. By Sunday night, there were now 4 offers on this unit and unfortunately we lost out. In the housing market, even though there are offer dates, I encourage clients to skip the queue and make a bully or pre-emptive offer long before offer night. I recently helped my clients purchase a great home on in the Yonge & Lawrence area using this tactic. I spend a lot of time looking for new listings in the areas my clients are searching, and on Monday around 3pm, I noticed what I felt could be the perfect home for them. The husband was available to see the home at 4pm. After our showing, he decided he loved it and his wife needed to see it, so at 5:30pm his wife came in to see the home and she loved it too. While at the house, I noticed that only the business cards of my colleague & me were present, so it would be a great opportunity to present a bully offer as we were the only ones who had seen the house. I mentioned to my clients that people on property match (daily listings clients receive from their agents) or using realtor.ca would see this house the next day on Tuesday so they wouldn’t have a chance to react. In addition, it was the first day back to school from March Break so people wouldn’t be as focused on their house hunting right now. We put in our offer that night and Tuesday afternoon, my clients had an accepted offer and a new home. They were thrilled. Their home search had finally come to an end in the perfect neighbourhood. I worked with another couple looking for a large downtown condo. The perfect 1300+ sq ft condo with 2 +1 beds and 2.5 bathrooms overlooking Roy Thompson Hall came on the market. We went to see the condo on its second day on the market and made an offer the next day. My clients finally had the place of their dreams and the listing agent informed me that she was receiving many calls from other agents whose clients were upset she sold it so quickly to my clients. As I always say, the early bird gets the worm and that seems to really be playing out in the 2016 real estate market, where buyers and their agents need to be really aggressive with what they want in order to buy the place of their dreams. Toronto has become like New York: if you want it, someone else does too and your only advantage is to beat them to it.

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How To Find A Great Tenant?

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I’m often asked what are the best ways to find a good tenant. It’s important to get a quality tenant right from the beginning. Attracting a good tenant means having a quality place to rent out. First and foremost, make sure you have pictures. Then make sure the pictures offer a fair representation of what the house or apartment looks like. Write up a great description then post the pics & other details on various websites. Padmapper.com, Kijiji.ca & Viewit.ca are great places to start. Padmapper.com is a free rental posting site which will aggregate all of the postings on MLS, and other sites so that you can see what other landlords are charging in the area. Although Kijiji.ca is free, I would highly recommend paying for more guaranteed exposure on their site, like on the top of the page. Viewit.ca will also cost money. I have found the best success using padmapper.com & kijiji.ca. Increase your exposure by posting your kijiji link to your Facebook profile in case any friends or friends of friends are looking for a place to live. Once you have your listing posted and you start to receive inquiries, it’s time to use the powers of Google to search each prospective tenant to make sure they are on the up and up. Google them so that you can peruse their Facebook and Linkedin profiles to determine if you have any mutual contacts. If you do, it can be a great opportunity to get an authentic reference. Once they have decided to rent your place, make sure they fill out a rental application so that you can call their references, employer & previous landlords. It’s important to invest the time before someone moves in to make sure they are a respectable person. Unfortunately the Landlord Tenant Board only favours the tenant so once someone is in, it will be hard to get them out so make sure you choose correctly from the beginning. You should also run a credit check on them to make sure they do pay their bills on time. A credit score of at least 650 is ideal. And they should be paying their bills within 30 days, at an R1 level. An R2 level means they pay their bills within 60 days, R3 within in 90days. And if they pay people within 90 days what’s to stop them from paying you in the same fashion. You can also work with a real estate agent who can take care of all of these details for you. They will also post your rental on MLS. The fee for doing this is usually 1 month’s rent. Half a months rent will go to the person who found the tenant and half a month’s rent will go to the agent for posting and handling the listing. As a real estate investor, I believe that learning to find your own tenants is a good skill to acquire. If you are looking for some handholding on finding a tenant on your own, I’m happy to help. Once your new tenant moves in, don’t forget to treat them nicely. A welcome gift of something bubbly is always a nice touch and don’t forget them at Christmas time.

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When is the best month to list your house?

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I’m often asked when is the best time to list a house. The answer might be surprising. Many people feel that the spring market is the best time to list a home to get the most value. Well, I disagree. January is the absolute best time to list your house. Here’s why. The visits to realtor.ca increase significantly over the holidays and many people make a new year’s resolution to buy a new home or change their living situation (ie get a divorce). Then January hits and you have these buyers who are anxious to make a move with nothing to buy. Then the second week of January hits and they have this pent up desire to buy something – anything. During those first couple of weeks in January, there isn’t a lot of inventory to choose from. So when that first house comes on the market in January, all of those buyers pounce, create a larger bidding war then usual which thereby drives up the price. Over the years, I’ve noticed that the properties that come on the market during the last half of January fare the best, garner the most offers and therefore the highest price. By the time the spring market begins, there is so much more competition for the same amount of buyers so sellers don’t always fare as well as those who came on the market in January. So if you are in the market to sell and want the biggest bang for your buck, January is your month.

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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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