Today is Thursday, March 10, 2016. This is episode ten of the Marshall Report. Welcome to the podcast.
In this episode:
1. Bananas
2. A question about the Arrow Lofts.
3. What to do during March Break
4. Homes sales take a big leap in February
5. The straw man fallacy
6. 16 words you will be surprised are 100 years old.
7. How close is walking distance to an LRT stop?
8. Commuting by helicopter
9. Shopping vs buying.
10. What you would tell you mom.
Ten
Double digits, episode number ten. Every Thursday for the past ten weeks I have been podcasting. They are getting easier to do and I think easier to listen to.
Maybe I’m wrong.
I’m going to keep doing them. I like the format. I like having a bunch small current event kind of things to talk about.
I like the place.
I like the platform.
Junk mail
I only received two postcards from realtors this week.
One was a repeat from a few weeks ago.
The other asks the question
Thinking about buying or selling in Uptown?
It’s a funny question. I live in Uptown. Sure I could be thinking of selling, but why would I? I love living in Uptown. But buying, since I already live here, what am I going to buy another house? Well, I guess that’s OK. I would if I could.
Also in junk mail, I got the fast food coupons and a flyer to join the gym, my first batch of home improvement mini magazines and I got the phone book.
I flipped through it briefly before tossing it into the recycle bin with the rest of the mail.
Bananas
I’m unusual you know. Besides being the only realtor I know with a podcast, I peel bananas from the wrong end. My sister makes fun of me for this but I really think everyone else is peeling bananas the wrong way. Try it next time. Next time you eat a banana, peel it from the bottom. You will see how easy it is.
It seems so simple once you discover that but somehow in this culture we were taught to peel bananas from the top and even though this is harder, people, like my sister resist a simple change that would make their lives a little easier.
This is an analogy. Let’s call it the banana analogy. This is a manifestation of how I’ve come to live my life. Questioning everything.
I got question from Jenifer
It asks:
Do you think the Arrow Lofts are a good investment? I really like a little place there but I’m concerned about the location. Thank you
Jenifer
I think the location is good. It is not as busy as King and Victoria. It is close to a lot of things without being too close. It is close to Victoria Park which is a gorgeous park. I love the water and the weeping willow trees.
We often forget about the Arrow Lofts. They are just over the hill away from a lot of the action. But there are other condos in downtown Kitchener too that are often overlooked. First of all, City Centre Condos are finally finished, or finished enough that the owners are now getting the keys. I was in a unit last week up on the 16th floor and the view was awesome.
Other condos downtown include some older ones on Margaret Street and on Mansion Street. There is Kaufman Lofts of course and then the new projects: One Victoria, 100 Victoria, the Midtown Lofts and Victoria Commons. I have my favourites for different reasons.
With the LRT coming and the high price of condo units, they are ‘buy and hold’ proposition.
There are rumblings and grumblings that we have overbuilt condos, but the optimistic side of me says that we are just ahead of the market. I was out with a property developer the other day and he said basically the same thing. Thats why we are building so many rentals in UpTown.
KW News
A Coca-cola truck got stuck under the park street train overpass bridge. The LRT is really disrupting all of our traffic patterns. I live in Uptown Waterloo so I hit it avery single time I go out.
But it is all for the greater good. Next year when those trains are running, we will all feel so happy and proud.
March break is coming up. If you have kids, there are cheap movies, events at the public libraries, Bingeman’s, the Kitchener Market, and a lot of other places. On great go to place for info of things to do in Kitchener Waterloo is a simple little site called stuff to do with your kids in KW.
I had a client in town last weekend. He had plans to go for dinner at Berlin Restaurant but could’t get reservations, or I guess didn’t think to make reservations in time. It is a really popular place. It in on my list of restaurants to visit for sure. It has been written up a few time recently, from some local food blogger to The Globe and Mail.
Home sales take a leap in February
Residential sales through the Multiple Listing System (MLS®) of the Kitchener-Waterloo Association of REALTORS® (KWAR) were up 28.2% compared to the same month last year with 452 homes being sold in the month of February, 18.6% above the 5-year average for the month.
Residential sales (KW & Area) in February included 280 single detached homes (up 40.7% from last February), 33 semi-detached (down 17.5%), 31 townhomes (up 6.9%) and 103 condominium units (up 25.6%).
Last february, if my memory serves me correctly was cold cold cold and I was huddled inside wearing my favourite wool socks and watching netflix mostly. So when we are comparing this Febraury’s sales to last February’s sales, we are not comparing apples to apples as the expression goes.
Of course we had an extra day in this year in February too as it is leap year, so that might also account for some of the increase.
Speaking of leap year. I would like to propose that we make that extra day every four years a holiday. We could call it leap day.
Or we could be more creative.
Single detached homes sold for an average price of $419,480 an increase of 7.7% compared to last year. The average sale price for a condominium was $242,272, an increase of 8.3% while townhomes and semis sold for an average of $328,569 (up 10.0%) and $291,770 (up 12.0%) respectively. The average sale price of all residential sales through the KWAR’s MLS® System increased 10.3% to $361,889 compared to February 2015 with 42.0% of home sales in February occurring in the $250,000-$350,000 range.
Here is a fun quick fact based on MLS data:
A quick look at the KW market shows that we had 358 freehold listings added in the last 60 days. During this same period 617 listings either sold or sold conditionally. So in short we sold almost double what was added in 60 days.
We currently have 489 active freehold listings on the market in KW, with more than 300 homes selling per month (Jan & Feb) our supply is extremely small and shrinking.
Conclusion – if the spring market doesn’t bring a lot of listings, we are going to see some serious price increases in the region. I personally think that almost any reasonable purchase made now will provide excellent return on appreciation alone especially in the single family home segment.
30 Days
If you area regular listener to this podcast, you might remember that this is my year of 30-day challenges. The first one was to get up early, bird early, before the birds even. I’m getting up early, I’ve been shooting the nighttime in back.
My second 30-day challenge is No Netflix. I don’t miss it at all. I’m actually thinking of cancelling my subscription. That is how much I don’t miss is.
I found my library card again. I reacquainted myself with the habit of reading while backpacking around Vietnam and Cambodia at the end of last year.
And of course I have a long long list of podcasts that I love to listen to. One of my new favourites is called Longform. It is a straight interview show with really eclectic guests. I was listening last night to an interview with Ira Glass. He is the godfather modern podcasting. Everyone sounds like Ira Glass. You used to have to have a radio voice, but he broke away and broadcasts and podcasts in a conversational voice.
He said that podcasters broadcasters should try to lower their voice consciously because when you are nervous or excited your voice rises. Good advice.
Another favourite podcast of mine is one called, ‘you are not so smart’. This year they are looking at fallacies and I only mention this because the term ‘straw man’ has recently become part of corporate speak and with a lot of jargon, it becomes part of our lexicon without most people knowing what it means.
So the straw man fallacy is the most common fallacy. According to wikipedia: it is
an argument based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position
And we do this all the time.
If you every catch yourself starting a sentence with, “so why you’re saying is…” then you are probably arguing a straw man.
I don’t know why this suff interests me, but it does.
100 years
I was on Mental Floss website again. I guess I like trivia and I know I like words.
They have a list of words 16 words you might be surprised are 100 years old. Those words or terms include economy size, high-maintenance, job hunting, ponytail, punchline and realtor.
High-maintenance was term usually applied to roads. The term did not apply to people until 1982.
Punchline came out of vaudeville
Realtor was a word created by the then National Association of Real Estate Boards. It’s no wonder it never really caught on.
LRT
There was a story on the Redpin’s website last week titled
Toronto homes near the subway are worth 14% more than the city average
And that is a great headline and we all know its probably true. I’d pay more for a house near a subway stop if I lived in Toronto or Taipei or anywhere with decent mass rapid transit.
Of course, you think you know where I’m going with this story. I’m going to talk about buying a house near the LRT.
Nope. Well, yes, but not exactly.
Everyone is talking about that now. We all agree, that it would be advantageous to buy a home near an LRT stop. But how close is considered ‘near an LRT stop’. I see listings now come up on the east side of Weber that say ‘steps to an LRT stop’. It’s like that newspaper article last month mentally placing the new Google building near student condo units.
The RedPin story goes on to ask, “how far is ‘walking distance’ to a subway stop” and in a survey found that:
Five minutes is a no-brainer
Ten minutes when it is -20 outside is doable but
Fifteen minutes is too far.
Those findings are consistent with what has been published lots of times already. Since for the average person it takes about 12 minutes to walk a kilometre. You should look at buying a home within about 800 meters of a stop.
Commuting by helicopter
There is a city on Vancouver Island known for its bars. Also known as a rough and tumble logging and fishing town. Nanaimo.
But now it is changing. As people are being priced out of Vancouver real estate market, it is actually making sense for a lot of people to buy a house in Nanaimo and commute to downtown Vancouver by float plane, helicopter and of course by regular ferry.
The helicopter ride into downtown Vancouver is actually shorter in terms of time than most other Vancouverites commute.
So, see the parallels here?
Vancouver – Naniamo
Toronto – Kitchener
When I read stories like this, I’m not surprised at all how many calls and emails I get out of Toronto area from people thinking of moving or just investing here.
It’s easy to shop, harder to buy
I’ve got a lot of clients and some I think sometimes just like shopping. I love looking at houses too. I get it. Houses are fun. It’s fun to dream. It’s easy to shop. It’s fun to learn, and dream, but buying has to happen, sooner or later.
You might not be ready to buy yet, but you have to ask yourself, ‘If the perfect house comes up, what am I going to do?’
Will you buy? Will you hesitate? Have you got enough information yet so you’ll know it when you see it?”
Are your ducks in a row?
Or will you kick yourself for the next year? Will it be the one that got away?
And if you miss out will that be the end of the world?
Are you shopping or are you buying?
I’ll leave you with this thought.
I work with lots of people. Most people are pretty cool.
I approach things openly and honestly and I take people at their word. I trust people because I am in the trust business. I can only earn trust by giving trust.
So recently I was working with some private sellers. I tried to nurture them through the sale but it turned out that, well it turned out that they were liars and cheaters. I hate to end the podcast on a negative note but my parting thought is:
If you can’t tell your mom about what you did, then don’t do it.
