The blog has been on the back burner for the last few months; but with the leafs changing colours, the blossoming of new NFL and NHL seasons, and summer vacations just a distancing memory; I figured there was no better time than the present to give you an update as to what I've been up to in the last few months.
The first few months of the year was non-stop work; as we were in a crazy market place with listings selling as soon as they hit the FILOGIX DMS system and multiple offers on what seemed like half of the houses that were just listed. Renovations on the house that my wife and I bought last summer were nearing a completion (at least the interior renovations), and we were looking forward to the coming summer living on the lake.
As Spring turned to Summer and July 1 came around we saw the introduction of HST (Harmonized Sales Tax), and we were unsure how this would affect the market place. In theory it shouldn't have had a great affect on the resale market; with the only difference being the PST being charged on our Commissions and on Lawyer fees. It is new home construction that prices were adjusted to a greater degree with; and builders typically came up with prices in advance of the July 1st timeline that reflected HST in the price of the homes they advertised.
The market did slow after July 1st, in my summation due to three main reasons.
First people who were qualifying for historically low interest rates, and had them guaranteed for 60 or 90 days were running out of time and either acted in late June or decided that the increase in the rates wasn't a priority deciding factor in buying a home at the present time.
Second people had this HST visions in their head that they would be paying all this extra money to buy/sell a house; so it advanced their timeline to list/buy a home pre-July 1st.
Third, it's Summer. And what a beautiful Summer it was, sunshine everyday and hot weather. What a great time to take it easy and head to the camp or take a holiday. That's exactly what people were doing, packing up the kids and getting away for a few weeks.
So with the office work not taking up as much of my time as it was previously, we were gearing up to start some of the landscaping at our house on Simon Lake; that is until I had this great idea (my wife didn't agree with the "great" part at first). Let's buy our first rental property!
Its been something I wanted to do for a while, and a great opportunity came up and we decided to pull the trigger on a single family home in the West End that needed a large amount of cosmetic work. So we closed on the house mid-July right before I was taking a week off to Volunteer at Camp Quality (will talk about in another post but it was truly an amazing experience). Coordinating the renovations took the greater part of July and we had the place ready to rent in August.
So defiantly a busy time for my wife and I; but we are looking forward to a beautiful Fall and lots of fun times in terms of work and play to close out 2010.
Thanks for reading!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
New rules for buying homes
Jim Flaherty has announced over the last few days that there are new rules for buyers qualifying for a mortgage when buying homes.
These new rules essentially get broken down into two main points:
1) All borrowers need to meet the standard for lending based on a 5 year fixed rate mortgage; they are still allowed the option to go ahead with the lower rate variable mortgage but they must meet the fixed 5 year requirements.
2) Government's are lowering the maximum that homes can be refinanced for from 95% to 90%. They are also requiring the 20% down payment for government backed mortgage insurers for "speculative properties".
What does this mean?
A lot of people see this as a clear indication that mortgage rates will be on the rise and in the very near future. When I discuss interest rates with clients and colleagues it seems like there is a certain general knowledge that interest rates will go up eventually; at the current rates it is tough for them to continue to go down!
There has been some indication that Jim Flarerty has also said that by the end of 2010 rates should be increasing; again it is tough to argue that they can remain so low for so long.
What does this mean to the average consumer?
If you are in the market for a home, than now is as good of a time as any. With rates still low it is a great opportunity to take advantage of the low cost of borrowing.
As a second point to people in the market to buy these rules shouldn't affect people all that much; I would hate to see people leveraging themselves to be qualifying for homes that they can just barely afford; and if their rates go up a point or two they will be in a situation where they may not be able to pay the mortgage! As for the 20% down; this has been around for awhile the government is just demanding this out of any speculative buyers which is not the boat that the majority of home buyers are in.
This will defiantly be the topic of conversation around water coolers at Real Estate offices and there may be more news on the horizon, specifically about first time home buyers. Nonetheless it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Thanks for reading,
David Kurt
Sales Representative
Coldwell Banker Charles Marsh Real Estate
These new rules essentially get broken down into two main points:
1) All borrowers need to meet the standard for lending based on a 5 year fixed rate mortgage; they are still allowed the option to go ahead with the lower rate variable mortgage but they must meet the fixed 5 year requirements.
2) Government's are lowering the maximum that homes can be refinanced for from 95% to 90%. They are also requiring the 20% down payment for government backed mortgage insurers for "speculative properties".
What does this mean?
A lot of people see this as a clear indication that mortgage rates will be on the rise and in the very near future. When I discuss interest rates with clients and colleagues it seems like there is a certain general knowledge that interest rates will go up eventually; at the current rates it is tough for them to continue to go down!
There has been some indication that Jim Flarerty has also said that by the end of 2010 rates should be increasing; again it is tough to argue that they can remain so low for so long.
What does this mean to the average consumer?
If you are in the market for a home, than now is as good of a time as any. With rates still low it is a great opportunity to take advantage of the low cost of borrowing.
As a second point to people in the market to buy these rules shouldn't affect people all that much; I would hate to see people leveraging themselves to be qualifying for homes that they can just barely afford; and if their rates go up a point or two they will be in a situation where they may not be able to pay the mortgage! As for the 20% down; this has been around for awhile the government is just demanding this out of any speculative buyers which is not the boat that the majority of home buyers are in.
This will defiantly be the topic of conversation around water coolers at Real Estate offices and there may be more news on the horizon, specifically about first time home buyers. Nonetheless it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Thanks for reading,
David Kurt
Sales Representative
Coldwell Banker Charles Marsh Real Estate
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
CBC Morning North Radio Interview this morning with Markus Schwabe
I had a quick interview yesterday with CBC Morning North Host Markus Schwabe about my new Real Estate Blog if you had the chance to tune in this morning.
We discussed how the strike has affected the Sudbury Market and what type of market we are currently in; overall it went really well and I was happy to do it and get some exposure for the blog.
It is funny how things came together for the interview; a client of mine was in Sudbury working for CBC and doing a lot of research on the benefits of being a First Time Home Buyer in terms of all the incentives that the government introduced last year; and at the same time she was shopping for a place and we connected and I helped her through the buying process. So 2 days after I start my Real Estate blog she called our office and said that she wanted to have me on the radio.
I look forward to having some new readers this morning and hope you continue to follow me as I attempt to help communicate where we are currently and where we are headed in the Sudbury Real Estate Market.
Thanks for reading;
David Kurt
Sales Representative
Coldwell Banker Charles Marsh Realty
We discussed how the strike has affected the Sudbury Market and what type of market we are currently in; overall it went really well and I was happy to do it and get some exposure for the blog.
It is funny how things came together for the interview; a client of mine was in Sudbury working for CBC and doing a lot of research on the benefits of being a First Time Home Buyer in terms of all the incentives that the government introduced last year; and at the same time she was shopping for a place and we connected and I helped her through the buying process. So 2 days after I start my Real Estate blog she called our office and said that she wanted to have me on the radio.
I look forward to having some new readers this morning and hope you continue to follow me as I attempt to help communicate where we are currently and where we are headed in the Sudbury Real Estate Market.
Thanks for reading;
David Kurt
Sales Representative
Coldwell Banker Charles Marsh Realty
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Where we were; Where we are; and Where we're going
This is the Where We Were part of this three piece post where I will attempt to take a look at how we faired in our local Sudbury Real Estate market in 2009 (comparing it over the previous year's figures).
To start out let's take a look at some figures that were provided by the Sudbury Real Estate Board thanks to the MLS/Filogix System (click on image to see larger.)
What do these numbers tell us?
First we see that year over year comparing 2008 to 2009 the total number of sales has dropped close to 20%; while in that same time the total number of listings dropped roughly 12%. When we compare the total number of sales relative to the number of listings for the same time period we see a rather constant figure that hovers just over the 50% mark which all in all isn't terrible. This is considering 2008 was a crazy year for real estate in the Greater City of Sudbury where in the early months we saw a shortage of listings with multiple offers on almost every listing to a rapid change that brought about a buyers market with a huge over-surplus in the number of listings available.
Another key fact to note is that our sales in the month of Dec for 2009 are much stronger compared to the average sale for 2009; in almost all area's in The Greater City of Sudbury. This seems to indicate that prices for the average homes are on the rise.
We see a climb in terms of the average value sale specifically in the locations of; New Sudbury, South End and Valley East. These three locations specifically have a large enough pool of data to be able to draw this basic conclusion (New Sudbury having 19 sales in the month, South End registering 14 and Valley East coming in at 31 sales for December.) It is tough to gauge how accurate some of the other locations are to determine if there were an increase or a decrease because of the few sales available in the month of December that we are looking at. (For example the one sale in Broader South End may have been a fixer-upper property compared to a lot of $500,000+ houses that are for sale on the waterfront.)
As with any statistics people can interpret these a number of ways; some seeing the glass half full and others seeing it half empty. Overall these numbers seem to be a positive for Sudbury as we enter the New Year and a New Decade.
Please feel free to comment with any input that you may have based on some of the statistics of our market; I look forward to hearing what you all have to say.
Thanks for reading,
David Kurt
Sales Representative
Coldwell Banker Charles Marsh Real Estate
To start out let's take a look at some figures that were provided by the Sudbury Real Estate Board thanks to the MLS/Filogix System (click on image to see larger.)
What do these numbers tell us?
First we see that year over year comparing 2008 to 2009 the total number of sales has dropped close to 20%; while in that same time the total number of listings dropped roughly 12%. When we compare the total number of sales relative to the number of listings for the same time period we see a rather constant figure that hovers just over the 50% mark which all in all isn't terrible. This is considering 2008 was a crazy year for real estate in the Greater City of Sudbury where in the early months we saw a shortage of listings with multiple offers on almost every listing to a rapid change that brought about a buyers market with a huge over-surplus in the number of listings available.
Another key fact to note is that our sales in the month of Dec for 2009 are much stronger compared to the average sale for 2009; in almost all area's in The Greater City of Sudbury. This seems to indicate that prices for the average homes are on the rise.
We see a climb in terms of the average value sale specifically in the locations of; New Sudbury, South End and Valley East. These three locations specifically have a large enough pool of data to be able to draw this basic conclusion (New Sudbury having 19 sales in the month, South End registering 14 and Valley East coming in at 31 sales for December.) It is tough to gauge how accurate some of the other locations are to determine if there were an increase or a decrease because of the few sales available in the month of December that we are looking at. (For example the one sale in Broader South End may have been a fixer-upper property compared to a lot of $500,000+ houses that are for sale on the waterfront.)
As with any statistics people can interpret these a number of ways; some seeing the glass half full and others seeing it half empty. Overall these numbers seem to be a positive for Sudbury as we enter the New Year and a New Decade.
Please feel free to comment with any input that you may have based on some of the statistics of our market; I look forward to hearing what you all have to say.
Thanks for reading,
David Kurt
Sales Representative
Coldwell Banker Charles Marsh Real Estate
Premier Blog Post
I have contemplated creating a Sudbury Real Estate blog for many reasons in the past few months and today seemed like a perfect day as any to make the leap into the digitial age as an internet blogger.
As a younger agent in Sudbury I feel that it is partially my duty to embrace and implement new tools and resources (I guess a lot of people would not consider blogging a new tool) that allow me to share thoughts and market information with local Sudburian's.
Being an agent in Northern Ontario it is surprising to find how little information there is about our local market place compared to larger centres to the south (Ottawa, G.T.A, Tri-City, etc...). Google-ing for information in these areas will provide a buyer/seller with a host of useful information. You can find statistics, predictions, market indicators, and economists insights focused on any niche market you may be trying to educate yourself about. Good luck finding anything similar to that once you drive past 69North of Barrie (which is getting closer and closer with the expansion of the 4 lane. On a brief side note it is slightly comical that we are getting excited about one of the major highways that links us to the south and beyond JUST NOW becoming 4-laned).
If you're trying to investigate the local market place and are looking for those statistics and professional insight in and around the Sudbury Area you'll be lucky to find a CMHC New Housing report and a few Sudbury Star articles referencing Dr. Robinson's interesting views on where Northern Ontario is heading.
I hope you follow me on this journey as I try to do whatever it is I can, to help you educate yourself, as to the home buying and selling process. Hopefully we can create a little bit of a buzz for anyone looking for market information and professional opinions regarding our Real Estate Market in Sudbury.
Thanks for reading;
David Kurt
Team Kurt Sales Representative
Coldwell Banker Charles Marsh Real Estate
As a younger agent in Sudbury I feel that it is partially my duty to embrace and implement new tools and resources (I guess a lot of people would not consider blogging a new tool) that allow me to share thoughts and market information with local Sudburian's.
Being an agent in Northern Ontario it is surprising to find how little information there is about our local market place compared to larger centres to the south (Ottawa, G.T.A, Tri-City, etc...). Google-ing for information in these areas will provide a buyer/seller with a host of useful information. You can find statistics, predictions, market indicators, and economists insights focused on any niche market you may be trying to educate yourself about. Good luck finding anything similar to that once you drive past 69North of Barrie (which is getting closer and closer with the expansion of the 4 lane. On a brief side note it is slightly comical that we are getting excited about one of the major highways that links us to the south and beyond JUST NOW becoming 4-laned).
If you're trying to investigate the local market place and are looking for those statistics and professional insight in and around the Sudbury Area you'll be lucky to find a CMHC New Housing report and a few Sudbury Star articles referencing Dr. Robinson's interesting views on where Northern Ontario is heading.
I hope you follow me on this journey as I try to do whatever it is I can, to help you educate yourself, as to the home buying and selling process. Hopefully we can create a little bit of a buzz for anyone looking for market information and professional opinions regarding our Real Estate Market in Sudbury.
Thanks for reading;
David Kurt
Team Kurt Sales Representative
Coldwell Banker Charles Marsh Real Estate
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