Today is Thursday September 29 and this is the 37th episode of the Marshall Report. Welcome to the podcast.
In this week’s episode:
2. Land for sale
3. Oktoberfest
4. Another year
6. Anger and fear
7. Client or customer
8. Competition and Uber
9. Now is the time
10. The race
Let’s get on with the show.
Coffee and more coffee
I just finished my third cup of coffee. I will likely have another before the morning is over. I drink a lot of coffee. We all do. Canadians are always in the top five when surveys are taken about which country consumes the most coffee.
We love our Tim Hortons. We like Starbucks. Most of us have a drip coffeemaker in our kitchens and some of us have something fancier. I love when I have a client who works at Google. Those guys have unbelievable coffee.
This summer, I slowly read through the Waterloo Public Library’s collection of Lee Child/Jack Reacher novels. Jack Reacher drinks a lot of coffee. Coffee is one of those things that doesn’t seem to have a downside. Studies have even shown that having four cups of coffee a day may actually be good for you. But you know how studies are.
But back to Canada. A global marketing research company found Canada’s per capita coffee consumption third behind Finland and Netherlands. Sweden came in fourth. Italy came in tenth.
Clearly there is some correlation between cold winters and coffee consumption. But that is not the only reason, though this might be a chicken and an egg argument. One of the reasons that we drink so much coffee is because it is so readily available. There are, for example almost thirty-seven hundred Tim Hortons stores across Canada. That’s one Tim Hortons for every 9000 Canadians and it sometimes seems that they are all ahead of you in the drive through line.
Question of the week – land for sale
I got the following question the other day through the chat widget on my website – keithmarshall.ca. It was from Adriana and titled ‘List of available parcels – Kitchener Waterloo’
Hi, I would like to know if there is a way to find out the available parcels, I want to build myself a house, not to buy it from builders. Thank you
I don’t think there is any undeveloped land within the city limits that is not already purchased or pending or otherwise spoken for. This isn’t 1816. This is 2016. The best I could suggest was to contact the cities and the Region of Waterloo development offices and ask them.
But then I started thinking about infills and teardown. There are some small property development companies going around looking for distressed properties and when successful, buying and tearing down the places, putting up some really nice and modern places in mature neighbourhoods.
It would, in my opinion be easier to find a teardown than a parcel.
Oktoberfest
When I worked at our local newspaper, one year I got free tickets to the media event for the opening of Oktoberfest. At the door I received a ticket for one hotdog and all the beer I could drink.
Oktoberfest is all about beer.
But there is more, lots more. In fact there are 46 separate events listed on the Oktoberfest website. Those include: bicycle races, treasure hunts, fashion shows, keg tapping, the parade, car shows, lots of eating and cooking events, barrel races, a hockey tournament and lots of other things that are kind of hard to describe in two words or three.
Oktoberfest officially starts on Friday October 7th.
Another year, maybe more
I sold my listing in Waterloo on Bronco Crescent. We put it on the market on a Wednesday, there were about 25 showings. After a week, on the following Wednesday at 6pm we took offers. There were five. All were above asking price and without conditions. My clients took the best offer which was $31,000 over asking price.
I wrote about this and my market prediction for real estate here.
A Polish weightlifter
A Polish weightlifter by the name of Tomasz Zielinski was awarded an Olympic medal a few weeks ago for an event he completed in the previous Olympics – four years ago. Tomasz Zielinski originally finished ninth in the 94kg weight class at the London games, but after results were re-tested earlier this year the six first finishers were found positive for using performance enhancing drugs.
This year, using more advanced methods the International Olympic Committee re-tested hundreds of samples from the 2008 Beijing games and the 2012 London games and found 98 athletes testing positive for using prohibited substances.
What I think is if you have to cheat to win then you haven’t really won, have you?
But the problem is that everyone is cheating so if you don’t cheat you don’t compete. So the solution is to do exactly what the OIC is doing – beating the cheaters.
I would like to say that cheaters never prosper and clearly when it comes to performance enhancing drugs that seems to be the case. But in business we are always looking for advantages over our competition. We have to take advantage of opportunities when they show themselves. That’s not cheating. That’s reality. Growing up we are taught about fairness. Simplistically, we think things are fair or unfair. But life, unlike sports isn’t that simple.
So I wish this was a feel good story but it is not that black and white either. Tomasz Zielinski got the Bronze for coming in ninth in London but ironically he tested positive in Rio and was not allowed to compete.
Here is a captured thought.
Anger is not a real emotion. It is fear wrapped up and hidden. Figure out what you are afraid of before you get angry.
The unrepresented home buyer
With my recent listings I have had the opportunity to meet several people that are going it alone – house shopping without an agent. I wrote about that here.
Uber
My friend Steven was a McDonalds manager. That’s why he said he was overweight. That makes sense. That would be an occupational hazard, being around all those Big Macs. That’s why I could never own a martini bar. He was always trying to loose weight and his most recent scheme was that he joined a ‘biggest loser competition’. The idea is essentially shaming himself into losing weight by working with others – competing and perhaps also for moral support.
How it works is on Day One, you weigh in and then the 30-day challenge begins. At the end of the 30-days you see who has lost the most weight and who hasn’t.
It might have some merits but essentially it is a gimmick, I think, but whatever, most diets contradict each other, wearable fitness technology has been proven to be worthless and joining a gym is not the same as going to the gym.
A good example of this is that my friend Steven missed the point of the competition. Before the weigh in, he drank as much water as he could hold adding maybe a couple of pounds to his pre-30-day challenge weight.
What a cheater.
We have Uber now in Waterloo Region. I’m not surprised that we approved Uber to operate here. We are a forward-thinking place, and a tech hub. Of course Uber is going to be allowed to operate here, and that’s a good thing
So there is an interesting story about Uber cheaters in China. The Guardian reported that Uber drivers are uploading pictures of themselves manipulated to look like ghosts, zombies and vampires with the aim that the passengers will cancel their rides. Each cancellation earns the drive a small fee, about sixty cents, and that is small enough that passengers don’t report the incident.
Pretty clever way to make money and get to stay home.
Now is the time
It used to be said around real estate brokerages by brokers and sales trainers that consumers would choose to work with the last realtor that they heard from. Where’s the proof? I ask. It doesn’t seem to matter. Real estate agents are trained to interrupt potential home buyers and sellers with their pitches of greatness.
I admit we do have short attention spans. We are short-sighted. We prefer to work on our immediate problems instead of looking to the long term.
It is never too soon to learn something new. It is never too soon to start gathering information about selling or buying your home next year. Like most projects, now is the best time to start.
The race is run
I will leave you with this parting thought. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.
