Toronto Realty Blog

APRIL 22, 2024

Perhaps one of the biggest changes, unfortunately, is with respect to prices. The first condo I ever sold was for $246,500. The first condo I ever sold to a first-time buyer was for $216,900. Affordability has never been worse in our market, and first-time buyers might be the ones most affected. I remember it vividly.

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Toronto Realty Blog

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

I have been perhaps the harshest critic of the pre-construction condominium industry in Ontario over the past two decades. Some of you, reading this, have made money in pre-construction. I think I grew so disenfranchised with writing about the perils of pre-con that I finally stopped. I have no doubt about that.

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Toronto Realty Blog

NOVEMBER 4, 2022

Do you want to play a game? I had a pretty good response to Wednesday’s blog, and while there weren’t a ton of comments on TRB, I did receive a lot of emails from readers. Five people sent me pricing for new construction projects, but one in particular really, really stood out. TorontoRealtyBlog.

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Toronto Realty Blog

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

Many of you have seen my now-infamous video of comparing pre-construction condo sales to buying pre-sale jeans. Oh, and the pre-sale jeans cost more than actual tangible jeans that are right in front of you. So why do people buy condos like this? We don’t buy jeans like this.

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Toronto Realty Blog

DECEMBER 1, 2023

TorontoRealtyBlog On Wednesday, I took a look at the pre-construction condominium market in Toronto and how prices and those sweet builder “incentives” look this fall. We know it has something to do with builders. We do this through fair issues resolution, education, and outreach.

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Toronto Realty Blog

DECEMBER 4, 2023

TorontoRealtyBlog Here’s a new one: why don’t we “blame” the current housing prices on the natural forces of supply and demand in a free market? 2) CMHC 3) The Bank of Canada 4) Lenders 5) Realtors 6) Society 7) Buyers 8) The Free Market Wow, this was so, so long ago. What fun would that be?

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Toronto Realty Blog

JANUARY 22, 2024

Thankfully , here on the Toronto Realty Blog, we’re not bound by the same “rules of attraction” that govern social media. No, here on Toronto Realty Blog, we can do things slowly. Today, I want to look at how bank-owned properties are priced, listed, and sold, and I want to use real examples.

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Toronto Realty Blog

FEBRUARY 24, 2022

How the hell was I supposed to know who a Libyan was? It should come as no surprise that I love writing blog posts in trilogies. Star Wars comes to mind, but that was a trilogy until they made three prequels, then George Lucas sold his company, and they’ve since made countless sequels and prequels. Any Clint Eastwood fans?

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Toronto Realty Blog

OCTOBER 27, 2023

While I have a very lengthy and somewhat contentious blog post lined up for next week, let’s first take a look at some stories from the week that are now in the rear view mirror… The Weird Gets Weirder It’s a difficult market out there and many agents don’t know how to work within it.

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Toronto Realty Blog

OCTOBER 18, 2023

How could you not know? How could you not know? How did you miss the signs? How could you be so oblivious and in your own world as to not see what was blatantly in front of your face? But how in the WORLD can two sets of property owners mess this up? But when you live in a house, how can you not know?

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Toronto Realty Blog

JANUARY 21, 2022

A client of mine recently told me that she’s looking at retiring to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which apparently is the hottest market in the United States. She’s thinking that she’ll sell her large condo here in Toronto and look for a tiny pied-a-terre that she can use when she’s in the city.

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Toronto Realty Blog

MARCH 30, 2022

I read the comments on the blog most of the time, just so you know. I recognize how political in nature my blogs have become and while this might have come with age and maturity, I also think it’s a by-product of where we are as a society, and how much the topic of “real estate” affects us.

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Toronto Realty Blog

AUGUST 30, 2023

TorontoRealtyBlog Here’s a moment in time, and one that I think I’ve written about before, so stop if you’ve heard this one… Years ago, I got roped into listing a dozen condos that were owned by the developer, right after the building was registered. So, I think we’ll look for it here.”

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Toronto Realty Blog

AUGUST 4, 2020

I just can’t do it. This is going to be the busiest August on record in the Toronto real estate market, you can mark my words. ” I tell this to buyers who ask what the summer is like, and I tell this to sellers who weigh the pros and cons of listing their house or condo for sale in the summer. .”

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Toronto Realty Blog

JULY 25, 2022

I just kept putting it off, like at 10:15pm on Wednesday night when you know you have to take the garbage out, but you’re too tired to get off the couch, and the longer you wait, the more likely you are to forget, or convince yourself you can do it in the morning. We’re talking about price-fixing by the government.

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Toronto Realty Blog

DECEMBER 8, 2023

How in the world do people get away with this? What if it’s listed for $1 and on the market for 84 days? Then again… I still can’t believe it… – If you’re told that a condo has “two bathrooms,” what would you expect? But what if there’s no offer date?

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Toronto Realty Blog

MARCH 14, 2022

Anybody read this in a previous blog post? And if somebody on the other side of the world in a completely different market is reading this right now, they’re probably confused. “How can you go buy a property when you haven’t even sold yours yet? I started selling real estate in 2004. Any guesses?

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Toronto Realty Blog

NOVEMBER 26, 2021

My, my, how times have changed. But do you want to know what hasn’t changed since July 30th? Blaming rising real estate prices on people rather than market forces. the interaction between buyers and sellers, in a market with varying levels of supply and demand, combine to determine price.

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Toronto Realty Blog

JANUARY 22, 2021

Do you remember early-2000’s garage-rock? Case in point: Do what I want ’cause I can and if I don’t, because I wanna. Do believe I told you so. What was I doing? TorontoRealtyBlog. The Strokes, The Killers, The White Stripes, The Black Keys, The Vines, The Hives… It was good while it lasted, right?

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Toronto Realty Blog

DECEMBER 19, 2023

TorontoRealtyBlog Do I bother starting with the obligatory, “I’ll try to make this post shorter this time around?” We all know how that goes. It’s just really, really hard to describe an entire year’s blog posts or an entire year’s real estate stories in a standard blog-post length.

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Toronto Realty Blog

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

TorontoRealtyBlog Thanks to the readers for suggesting blog topics before the long weekend! As you saw in Tuesday’s blog post, I took one such suggestion to heart. Thank you for taking us back to that place that we all thought we had left for good: pre-construction. I started blogging (ranting?)

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Toronto Realty Blog

MAY 31, 2023

Was he going to be rich because he was buying this condo? I received a call from an older gentleman who had seen me in a CBC documentary called “ The Condo Game. I received a call from an older gentleman who had seen me in a CBC documentary called “ The Condo Game. The condo was priced at $469,900.

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Toronto Realty Blog

DECEMBER 14, 2022

I hope you enjoyed that “trip down memory lane,” as Marina so eloquently put it, with the Top Five Blog Posts of 2022 in Monday’s post. Believe it or not, this is the eighth year I’ve been working with this format; the top five blogs followed by the top five posts. 4) Prices Outside The City Of Toronto.

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Toronto Realty Blog

DECEMBER 12, 2022

But I had a lot of fun here on Toronto Realty Blog as I always do, and I had even more fun sitting down to go through the year’s blog posts. Here are the Top Five Blog Posts of 2022 as we see them… #5: TRB Special Guest Posts: Chris Cansick, Matthew Morrison, & Tara Amina. Nobody does what I do.

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Toronto Realty Blog

MARCH 1, 2023

As you’ll see in today’s blog, many of the reasons for cancelations are often rooted in the same problems that caused delays, but some are extensions, and some are completely different reasons altogether. If you close your eyes and picture the northwest corner of Bloor and Dundas in Roncesvalles, what do you see?

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Toronto Realty Blog

MAY 16, 2022

When the government mandated a 20% down payment on properties of a $1,000,000 purchase price or higher, that meant that $800,000 properties shot up to the high-$900’s essentially overnight. Let’s say a developer is building a 100-unit condo. Let’s say the developer is selling these condos for $1,000 per square foot.

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Toronto Realty Blog

JANUARY 1, 2022

Well, maybe Thursday’s blog was a mouthful. All that time off over the holidays without an outlet for my thoughts – both about real estate, and not, and you had to know that the first blog back in January would be lengthy. It’s blogs like these that often make me feel guilty of being unoriginal, however.

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Toronto Realty Blog

MAY 3, 2021

It depends on where you find yourself on the real estate ladder, and to a certain extent, how you feel about the industry and the market in general. For other existing home-owners, empathy flows from their fingertips to the comments section on the blog, as they talk about what’s “fair.” TorontoRealtyBlog.

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Toronto Realty Blog

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

Let’s start a thread in the comments section for “How Long Have You Been On TRB?” ” I would love to hear from you guys, if for no other reason than to know how much we’ve grown together over the years. How about the regulars? Why am I wondering how long people have been around? But they did.

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Toronto Realty Blog

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

It seems we spent more time on Monday’s post talking about how long the readers have been on TRB than actually discussing the level of market saturation that exists in many downtown condos, but that’s okay. A condo owner contacted me in the summer about leasing out her condo. So thank you!

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Toronto Realty Blog

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

TorontoRealtyBlog While I do love writing these multi-part posts, I would love them a lot more if I finished them on time! Tuesday was a fairly busy day for the market! This continues the theme of “spotty” inventory in the market, where some neighbourhoods or price points get inventory, but others don’t.

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Toronto Realty Blog

JANUARY 20, 2023

We’ll look at the risks of pre-construction “investing” being put on full display. We’ll look at the intersection of greed and entitlement. Based on what they paid two years ago, plus land transfer tax, plus real estate fees, plus legal fees, et al, they’re likely looking at a net loss.

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Toronto Realty Blog

FEBRUARY 18, 2021

I don’t care about horsepower, or engines, or tires, or how loud and annoying the muffler is. ” Do they do this for everybody ? What did I do to deserve such incredible service? ” That’s me, in many respects, across a slew of different products and services. I don’t attend car shows.

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Toronto Realty Blog

MARCH 29, 2021

I feel like this is the sixth or seventh time I’ve tackled the “market crash” topic, and the result has always been the same. If the market dropped by 15%, would that be a “crash? Since that date, I have heard all kinds of talk about a market crash, and the talk has been very strong at certain points.

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Toronto Realty Blog

SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

There are a lot of features of a condo that could be considered a “deal-breaker,” but for the purpose of this game, I’ve chosen five. I’ve chosen what I believe may be five of the most egregious features, issues, or flaws of a condo, and while others will come to mind, they’re just not as bad.

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Toronto Realty Blog

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021

Really, really insightful discussion on Wednesday’s blog, and some admissions from regular readers that they may have seen the light, or at least, some light. Comments about the FHSA actually contributing to demand, thereby inflating the price of real estate, are perspectives that I wish certain members of government possessed.

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Toronto Realty Blog

JANUARY 31, 2022

I wanted to call this blog post, “Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda,” but by the time you finish reading it, you’ll be sick to your stomach. I suppose I’m in no position to tell a buyer how he or she should feel. But how can anybody take that at face value? Speaking of the stock market, what a month, eh folks?

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