Good morning;
To all the moms, soon to be moms and mothers who are with us from above; May you be surrounded and blessed by the love of your children, partners and loved ones – today and everyday!
The world spins because of you!
Happy Mother’s Day
It has been a very hectic few weeks since my last communication and the market continues to be more than a little “nuts”.
Properties Coming Soon
- Just finished staging a detached home with a detached double garage on a 23 foot x 113 foot lot in the 416 (Caledonia and Rogers) . Going to market at 550k! Great investment potential or live in and enjoy. Let me know if you want pics and details.
- 2 Bedroom plus Den almost 1200 Sqft GORGEOUS condo in Liberty Village!!!
- ON MARKET NOW 3138 Dundas St. In the Junction – Commercial building Generates $81,000/year fully leased! 2 – 3 bedroom apartments and 1 commercial store front – Asking $1,450,000
- On Market Now Large and renovated 2 bedroom condo- ground floor with outdoor yard and bbq area. $195,000 – Scarborough.
- On Market Now – For Lease 421 Quebec Ave. 2 bedroom beautiful apartment in the Junction – Ensuite Laundry, starbucks in building, stainless steel appliances totally fab – $2000/month plus utils
IN THE GTA MARKET – Full Report
Summary Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ8FXrQ1KSM&feature=youtu.be
GTA REALTORS® RELEASE MONTHLY RESALE HOUSING FIGURES TORONTO, May 4, 2016 – Toronto Real Estate Board President Mark McLean announced that there were 12,085 sales reported through TREB’s MLS® System in April 2016. This result, which represented a record for the month of April, was up by 7.4 per cent in comparison to April 2015.
For the TREB market area as a whole, annual sales growth was experienced for all major home types except semi-detached houses. In the City of Toronto, sales were down for detached and semi-detached houses as well as townhouses on a year-over-year basis. This dip in sales in the ‘416’ area code was due to a lack of low-rise listings. Many would-be buyers were not able to find a home that met their needs.
“Demand remained strong for all types of ownership housing. This suggests that Canadians continue to see the value in investing in homeownership, and on May 17, I encourage all homeowners to celebrate with us on National Real Estate Day,” said Mr. McLean.
“While April’s sales result represented a new record for sales, that number could have been even higher if we had benefitted from more supply. In the City of Toronto in particular, some households have chosen not to list their home for sale because of the second substantial Land Transfer Tax and associated administration fee. The lack of available inventory, coupled with record sales, continued to translate into robust annual rates of price growth,” continued Mr. McLean.
Home selling prices continued to trend upward in April. The MLS® Home Price Index Composite Benchmark was up by 12.6 per cent year-over-year. The average selling price was up by 16.2 per cent. The higher growth rate reported for the average home price, as compared to the MLS® HPI, points to a greater share of high-end home sales this year compared to last.
“As we move into the busiest time of the year, in terms of sales volume, strong competition between buyers will continue to push home prices higher. A greater supply of listings would certainly be welcome, but we would need to see a number of consecutive months in which listings growth outpaced sales growth before market conditions become more balanced,” said Jason Mercer, TREB’s Director of Market Analysis.
Sales April 1st-April 30th
- A new Record for sales transaction – over 12,000 – Would have been more but not enough inventory
- The average home price (all types combined) in the 416 is just over $766,000
- The average DETACHED home price in the 416 is $1,257,958
Real Life Occurrences In My Own Practice During the Past Several Weeks
Rock Star Digs
- I’m currently working on one of the most interesting deals to date. There is a fabulous smack downtown, 2600 Sqft Penthouse condominium for sale that belongs to an international music star. My clients (the buyers) were looking at spaces in the same building and we booked a showing to see this unit just for “comparison” also because we were nosey. They ultimately fell in love with it and we ae now in the process of acquiring it. The deal is at the conditional stage but hope to have it firmed up next week.
It has a $250,000-$300,000 sound studio, a 12 foot Steinway grand piano in the palatial living room autographed by world famous musicians and a $5000 singing toilet! All I know is that I would love an invite to a New Year’s eve party (or any party for that matter) to this posh house in the sky.
- The same buyer clients of this chic pad (mentioned above) were out bid 2 weeks earlier on beautiful smaller home (Approx. 2200 sqft ) in the junction area. Listed at $1.249.000 – I advised my clients that is was indeed worth asking price and more on paper. I did also project an actual sale price of $1.5 million. Although not supported by recent sales, this price was achievable because the home was renovated properly (permits, drawings etc) and so elegantly. The family was relocating to New Brunswick and the renos were completed 2 years earlier (not a fix and flip job). On offer night my clients gave me an offer of $1.38 million – firm. A very strong offer but with 9 competing offers we ended up towards the bottom. Final sale Price – $1.531.000 – An in my mind given the attributes of the property and the market supply – worth it!
East end Bidding war (a little funny business)
- My clients and I (same buyers from several weeks back bidding war) found ourselves bidding on another home in Riverdale. It had been nicely renovated 2 years ago and the current sellers had bought it already renovated for 839k. 2 years later they are on market for 949k with little to no additional work having been done since (mainly a new roof – 6k). I tell my guys that on paper the home is approx. $1,050,000 and I was being generous. My clients give me a final offer of $1,206,500!!!!! And we were still out bid – final sale price $1,210,000. We lost by $3500 and the winning bid came in from the listing agent’s own buyer. Not that it’s impossible but the selling agent advised us during the process that her buyer came in with a 1 time best and final offer. I find it very hard to believe that her buyer started at $1,210,000 on a 949k home that the day before was worth a max of $1,050,000.
I called the agent to explain to me how that was possible and she gave me attitude and was defensive. She did admit that her buyer (who during the process had another colleague presenting their offer) did come back with a better final offer but of course she did not tell me that. Not knowing that, we submitted our final offer when asked if that was our best we said yes. Technically we can’t do anything but ethically it smelled pretty rotten! It really was over paying and my guys were actually ok losing the home but not happy with the way it played out. There was “only” 3 offers total.
Same buyers – Success! Fast forward 2 weeks and we are bidding on home number 3. Listed at $1,050,00 and offer date on a Tuesday evening. We look at it and like it. Offer night comes and much to our delighted surprise we are the only offer registered to present. I was checking in throughout the day and although numerous realtors were calling to get an offer count we were the only ones to show. Of course we present an offer below asking and the seller did not even want to work with it. He wanted to wait to see if any more competing offers would come to the table. The market is such that sellers ignore the facts and simply expect more! We were a little irritated and 20 minutes later we told the selling agent that we improved our offer and that in 20 minutes we were going home! One of my buyers is an expecting mom and needlessly dragging things out was silly. Although many agents were hovering and calling in, no one else came to compete. We ultimately got the home for asking price. A very large detached (that has much more future value potential) in a nice hood. A way better buy than the home from just 2 weeks earlier at over $1.2 million!
$5 million benchmark price in 10 years if trends remain– If you can, Buy Now!
Real Estate Professional : HomeNews by Ephraim Vecina / 20 Apr 2016
As Canada’s best performing real estate market for several years now, Vancouver has seen home prices grow inexorably to unmanageable levels, breaching the million-dollar mark recently and prompting disgruntled locals to voice out their concerns via the #donthave1million campaign.
Within a decade, however, these concerns might prove moot as benchmark costs could go as high as $5 million for each single-family home if present trends do not change, according to an analysis by Daniel Tencer and Jesse Ferreras of HuffPost Canada.
Taking current price growth rates into account, the duo’s predictions noted that the baseline price of a house in Vancouver would be sitting at $5.1 million by 2026, nearly double the present value of $2.8 million. The story in Toronto—Canada’s next best-performing housing market—isn’t much better, with a projected price range of $2.26 million and $3.582 million for this type of property ten years hence.
Even going from a condo to a single-family home would become nigh-unaffordable for a significant proportion of would-be buyers within a decade.
“In Vancouver, it takes $879,000 to upgrade from an average condo to a house today, but 10 years from now it will cost between $1.99 million and $4.05 million,” Tencer and Ferreras wrote in their piece. “In Toronto today, upgrading from an average condo to an average house costs $758,000. By 2026, it will cost between $1.68 million and $2.95 million. Good luck.”
The HuffPost analysts said that while continuous growth in the next ten years is unlikely, “The point of this is not to scare you into rushing out and getting a huge mortgage before prices get any worse, it’s to illustrate that what’s going on in Toronto and Vancouver today can’t go on.”
Construction Blog # 16 (I think J )
People ask me all the time how our home building is going – I reply that I am numb. It’s not a bad thing, in fact I think it protects me from being over stressed. I told myself from the beginning that I would “go with the flow” and I have reached that point of Zen being.
We recently just had inspections past on: plumbing, electrical and HVAC. That’s good progress for sure but I did hope to be dry-walled by the end of April. We still need a week to finish some central vacuum connections, security camera, audio ceiling speaker, and internet/video Category 6 cabling. With a little bit of luck I may be able to start spray foam insulation the following week – and then Dry Wall!
The home will take on a totally different look on the inside once the dry wall is up, much like it did from the outside when the bricks and stone were complete.
Since its been mostly electrical work being done on the inside there are no real updated pictures to share at this point. Happy to give the 2 cent tours J
Have a wonderful Sunday and an amazing week, Anthony