Today is Thursday May 26 2016 and this is the 21st episode of the Marshall Report. Welcome to the podcast.
In this week’s episode:
1. Real estate that sounds like a Tom Waits song
2. Questions of the week
3. Movies in the Park
4. A brief look at Waterloo housing starts
5. Apps
6. Costco
7. The code
9. Don’t Panic
10. The universe
Tom Waits
I’ve been busy with a couple of sales and a couple of listings. The real estate market is hot and for some people, those who want to move this summer, time is running out.
I finally visited the brownstones along the front of 144 Park. I’ve wanted to see what they are like for some time. It is a cool looking building. I had a new client want to visit so that was all the excuse that I need. I love looking at houses. So they are about $600,000 and are three floors high. The cool thing about them is that they have an elevator, a personal elevator in every unit. The one we were in, my client rode it down to the first floor. I took the stairs. The little elevator creaked and groaned. It sounded like a Tom Waits song.
Question of the week
I get lots of stuff on the chat widget. I get some comments, unusual questions and some other stuff that I’m not sure what it is. Here is a recent sampling from the last little while.
I’m trying to route the fastest way to get from Waterloo (Parkside Dr area)to Norfolk St in Guelph.
The new owners held back 3K for some deficiencies, which were competed on time and now they are not releasing the money. Is there anything that can be done?
I have a rather complex situation. I had a private mortgage with a “friend”. He has now evicted me and we are at a stance as what to do with the property.
I’m looking for a house to rent in Kitchener. My children intend to go to Cameron Heights Collegiate and we want a place within the boundaries and also bus availability.
Are you a Realtor?
Here are my answers. Go through Maryhill, talk to your Realtor or lawyer and try Kijiji or hire a property manager to help. And yes I am a realtor.
I have to say, I also start some really great conversations on the chat widget. If I can answer the questions, I usually do because it only takes me a minute and its kind of fun. The chat widget is like my own person social network.
Movies in the park
Coming up in Victoria Park on Saturday June the 4th at 10pm, Jumanji will be playing. I don’t know what it is about watching movies in the park. Takes me back to the old days of drive in theatres I guess. Here is a link.
In past years there have been movies in Waterloo Park as well. But those have not been announced just yet.
Waterloo Region Housing Starts
According to the CMHC the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, this year will see slightly more houses built and fewer student apartments.
There is a high demand for single family homes in Waterloo Region due to a number of factors including the high price of Toronto area real estate, rising incomes and a host of other factors.
At the same time, most everyone finally agrees that we have built enough student housing for our universities.
Apps
It is funny about apps. We spend hundreds of dollars on our cell phones and thousands of dollars on our laptops, but when it comes to downloading apps for $3 or $30 we hesitate. I’ve got a great writing app called Scrivener. I think it cost me $50. I’ve had it for years. It just makes it easy to capture and organize ideas. It makes it easy to write blog posts and record podcast ideas.
I download another app recently. Its called scrapple. It is essentially a brainstorming app. I think the $20 bucks I spent on it was well worth it.
Costco
I was at Costco the other day. It is not a great experience. It starts in parking lot. Everyone wants to park near the entrance, so there are those people driving in circles looking for a good spot, or blocking other traffic as someone pulls out of a good spot.
Of course there are shoppers streaming out of the place with their oversized shopping carts. They are pedestrians so they walk wherever they want.
When you get in, you have to show your Costco ID. Someone will forget this fact and will be fumbling in their purse or wallet for that. Then they give a flyer, so of course the people in front of you stop to browse the flyer, blocking everyone streaming in the door.
The food is at the back and like the rest of their products, sometimes they decide just to stop carrying certain things, or they move them. I spend 20 minutes one time looking for coffee beans.
You graze a second lunch of cream cheese on crackers, and any other sample you can get near. Grazing free food is a bonus and that makes you feel better about the whole experience.
Then there is a big line up at the checkouts. You can’t use Visa. You have to use cash or MasterCard. It used to be American Express. Who carries American Express?
Then you have to navigate past the over loaded shopping carts piled up at the cafeteria and the line up at the service desk, but before you can squeeze though the doors, they have to check and make sure you didn’t steal anything. And now back out into the parking lot, but now you are the pedestrian and you are going to walk wherever you want.
If you forgot to bring your own bags, loading the stuff into your car is going to take awhile and when that fruit gets loose and starts rotting under you back seat you are going to curse the day you find it there.
I don’t know why I go to Costco.
We are getting a new Costco in Waterloo (near the dump). It’s funny that I am looking forward to this. It will be a 15 minute drive from my house instead of the 20 minute drive I have to do now.
The code
I live in an old house in UpTown Waterloo. I like the house, but I love the neighbourhood. When I’m not working I’m walking everywhere, to movie theatres, to grocery shopping, to a fabulous park, to coffee shops and restaurants, and sometimes even to a jazz club or a patio.
The house is fine but nowhere near up to today’s building code. The building code keeps changing and updating. New York City’s building code is 100 years old. One year older than my house. I wonder when Waterloo got its first building code.
It doesn’t trouble me much that we are not up to today’s code, it bother’s me though as I do work on the house that now I have to conform. For example, my front porch railing is not high enough by today’s standards, so when I rebuild my porch I have to make it higher. I like the height it is.
Also, last year, we put in a pool and now the inspector tells me that the fence is not up to code. We have to rebuild the fence, the fence that has been good enough since 1992. It’s a pain but that’s the way it is.
I was reading an article that said that 40% of buildings in New York City’s Manhattan could not be built today. They are either too tall or have too many apartment or too many businesses. It’s a shame. A lot of the things that make New York great would not be allowed today.
Anniversaries
It is the 50 anniversary of China’s Cultural Revolution. This is a kind of ‘don’t mention the war’ kind of things with the Chinese. It was a bad time. Mao wanted to create great disorder so that he could achieve great order. He only accomplished the first part and lots and lots of people died. And then he died and the Cultural Revolution was over. Sometimes megalomaniacs should quit when they’re ahead,
It is hard to imagine ten years of society turned upside down. It changed a lot of things forever in China and here we are 50 years later.
A lot of crazy stuff happened in and around 1966. Flower Power, Vietnam. There was stuff going on in France and other places. Some crazy ass stuff is happening in North Korea now and I suppose Afghanistan and Pakistan too.
Obama was in Vietnam last week. That pretty much ends that chapter of history.
It was 100 years ago that we said goodbye to Berlin Ontario and starting casting about for a new name. It’s funny when you look back at history. At the turn of the century, “Built in Berlin” was a big marketing slogan of the region, then came the war and all that changed pretty quickly.
Personally I think it was a mistake to call it Berlin in the first place. Cities should not be named after other cities. Naming them after dead people is only slightly better.
Call to action. Don’t panic.
We read a lot in the newspaper and see on the TV news what is happening with real estate this year. Home sellers wonder after three days on the market why they haven’t received an offer yet. Homebuyers wonder if the price of homes is moving beyond their means. I haven’t got the answers for those kinds of questions. But I do know that panic and worry does not solve anything. Maybe instead of panic and worry you could try some cold hard re-evaluation.
And I will leave you with this thought. The universe. It’s a big place
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
