Last Few Months

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!