Here's a story, written by my team member Jennifer Scaife, about a couple who recently entered the Toronto real estate market. Recently, Kassia and Cory were referred to me by a past client. Lively and energetic, they were eager to get going on their quest. We saw properties that challenged their tolerance for ‘fixer-upper’ and others whose state of ill-repair were jaw-dropping! We soldiered on, intent on finding the perfect home in the perfect neighbourhood that was within their first-timers’ budget...
Two weeks ago Bank of Canada raised its prime lending rate 0.25% points. As a result, we're now seeing posted bank rates for five-year mortgages at 4.64%. Experts are predicting the Bank of Canada will raise the prime rate a few more times over the next twelve months. With the average price of a home in Toronto at $730,000, the media reported that this was the beginning of the end for home ownership in this city and that people are now in danger of losing their homes. Not true...
A couple of years ago I listed a property in North York. It had been in the same family for more than 50 years and the house sat on a premium lot with a 40 foot frontage. The property was an ideal opportunity for a builder. We listed it for $1,199,000 on a Friday and set a date to review offers the next Tuesday. To my surprise, by the time Tuesday rolled around 15 agents had registered offers. On that same morning, I got a call from a gentleman who said he wanted to buy the house, but would only deal with me because I was the listing agent. I told him to meet me at my office at 10AM and that offers were going to be presented at 11:30AM. When the potential buyer showed up at my office, he told me he hadn't even seen the inside of the house, but had driven by it. He gave me a bank draft for $100,000 as a deposit and said, "I want this house and I'll pay more than anyone else. You present my offer after you've looked at all of the other offers, and tell me what the highest offer is. I'll pay more."
We sold a bungalow back in April with a completion/closing date scheduled for mid July. It seemed like a straightforward transaction. We represented the Seller, who lived out of town and had rented the house to two separate tenants - one who occupied the main floor of the bungalow and the other who lived in the basement. In the Agreement of Purchase and Sale, our client promised the buyer vacant possession of the entire premises, meaning that both tenants would have to move out and find new places to live before the deal would close. The main floor tenant found a new home very quickly; however, as the closing approached we discovered that the basement tenant had not found a place to move to and to top it off, hadn't even started looking.
I recently received a call from an agent on one of my listings. On the listing I stated that the seller would consider holding a mortgage for the new buyer. The agent said to me, "You mentioned on the listing that your seller will hold a mortgage. Can you tell me what that means?" I immediately knew that the agent I was speaking to was fairly new...
About six weeks ago I encountered something I hadn't experienced while trading real estate for some time. It was for a bungalow in the Cliffside Village area of Scarborough. We went in with an offer significantly under the asking price, and with a condition on a home inspection. I was expecting the Sellers to either sign back the offer closer to the asking price, and/or to remove the condition. I was completely surprised when