Today is Thursday September 22nd and this is the 36th episode of the Marshall Report. Welcome to the podcast.
In this week’s episode:
1. In the mail
2. How many cooling off days do I have?
3. Where am I going to take the dog?
4. What Reddit thinks about KW real estate
5. How many square feet do you need?
6. Five things I’ve learned about KW from my Toronto clients
7. Canada gets the Bronze
8. When was the last time you heard a busy signal?
9. Working for love
10. Connecting the dots
Let’s get on with the show.
In the mail
Autumn is officially here and you know what that means, postcards and flyers from Re/Max agents. I got two last week.
The first one asks the question, “Thinking about selling your home?” and then invites you to call for a free home evaluation. They give lots of reasons to sell with their team, such as a 90-day guarantee with conditions to get your home sold, free home staging consolation, advertising your home everyday, twice weekly updates, and of course putting your home in local real estate magazines.
The second one invites us to “find out what your home is worth in today’s market”. This one is from an award winning team in 2012, 2013, and 2014. They promise to advertise on multiple websites and in print media. They too have a guaranteed sold program with conditions attached.
This is old school stuff, but Remax is an old school brokerage. They are not an upstart and they certainly don’t want any disruptions.
Question of the week: How many cooling off days do I have?
If you decide not to sell your home, you can suspend or withdraw the listing but you cannot terminate or cancel the listing, at least not unilaterally. The difference is subtle but important. I wrote about that here.
Where am I going to take the dog?
Parts of Snyder’s Flats will be closed for a few days to deal with some invasive plant life. Starting today and going until next Monday affected trails will be closed as a licensed pesticide applicator with a hand held device will apply a herbicide commonly known as Roundup to individual plants. Follow up treatments may likely be needed for a couple more years on larger and new patches.
What Reddit thinks about KW real estate
The other day a link popped up on Reddit that caught my attention. This is what it said.
Recently witnessed a bus-full of GTA real estate investors touring open houses in Waterloo. Is this the new Waterloo?
How many square feet do you need?
I’ve been a realtor now for a long time, so I can pretty much judge the square footage of a home with a quick walk through. I also know, probably because I lived in Asia for ten years that I don’t need much space. I actually prefer smaller homes. Living in a small home forces you to not collect things. I hate clutter and about things I think, they are possessions, but although you own them, they really own you. I got rid of a couple of boxes of books last winter and now with old clothes I don’t hang onto them rationalizing that they will be great painting clothes. When was the last time I painted a room, eh?
We live in a 99 year old home in uptown Waterloo. It has small rooms and small closets.
I was reading an article on Property Shark comparing homes today to those build in 1910. Surprise, surprise, today’s house are on average 74% larger that they were 100+ years ago. Furthermore, the number of people living in homes has pretty much been cut in half, so personal living space since 1910 has increased by 211%.
So how many square feet are too many? And how many are too few? Of course, that is a personal choice. I think people can adapt to anything. According to the article, the average home is now about 2500 square feet which seems about perfect to me. But I’d rather live in a 1500 square foot home than a 3500 square foot home.
Five things I’ve learned about Kitchener Waterloo from my Toronto clients
I learn a lot from my clients. I wrote here about some of the things I’ve learned from my Toronto clients.
Canada gets the Bronze
According to a recent story in the Huffington Post, home prices in Canada are growing faster than all but other two countries.
Canadian home prices leapt by 10 per cent in the year leading up to June, topping every country in the world except for Turkey (13.9 per cent) and New Zealand (11.2 per cent), says a Global House Price Index released by Knight Frank, a U.K.-based real estate consultancy.
The top 10 were rounded out by Chile, where prices grew by 9.4 per cent, Sweden, where they jumped by 8.9 per cent; Malta (8.8 per cent); Austria (8.1 per cent); Iceland (8.1 per cent); Mexico (8 per cent); and Germany (7.9 per cent).
When was the last time you heard a busy signal?
I have family visiting from BC for a few weeks and they like golfing. I used to golf but pretty much gave it up when the kids were young. I still like it. I just didn’t have the time for it back then.
Or now.
So, it is up to me to book the tee time. I go to google to look up the number. Much to my surprise, there isn’t one. Where have I been? You have to book online now.
So this got me thinking about my cellphone.
It rarely rings anymore and I answer it even more rarely. Ten to fifteen years ago, I used to be on the phone all the time. When I say ‘on the phone’ I mean talking on the phone. But that slowly changed, maybe changed the way that summer turns into autumn, you don’t notice it at first and then you suddenly realize it.
Also I’ve found that when the phone rings it is often someone with a problem and they want to make their problem mine. I don’t need anymore problems. I have enough already. I’ll let that one go to voicemail. And with voicemail, as an aside, if I don’t know why you called and why I should call you back, I’m not going to.
I’m generalizing of course. I still talk on the phone. With my mom and sometimes my brother, with clients and with other real estate agents, but not with friends – that is done through texting, email and social media. Telephoning still connects and gets immediate results. But telephoning has always been disruptive. When I was growing up, it was thought rude to call anyone before 9am or after 9pm. The great telemarketing boom of the 80’s pretty much ruined the friendliness and intimacy of phone calling. A ringing phone was suddenly suspect. We started to filter our calls with caller id and voicemail. Imagine before that, you had no choice but to answer a ringing phone, or wait it out. Ten rings maximum was another rule we had.
So I’ve most always got my cell phone with me but it rarely rings and when it does I don’t always answer it. I’m sure an early version of me would find that odd. But likely you’re no different. When was the last time you heard a busy signal?
Call to action.
I was listing to a podcast last week — Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show. It is probably six or seven years old, but I just discovered it. He was interviewing Bill Burr, another comedian with a chat show. Bill’s podcast has been running since 2007. Bill Burr is a very funny comedian but what makes him notable is (I learned in the podcast) is his work ethic. He said he just puts his head down and does the work. There is a lot to be said about working just a little bit harder than the other guy.
So for me, as a successful real estate agent, a notable blogger and a novice podcaster. I do this podcast because I like doing it. But could you do me a favour and go over to iTunes and give me a review. I’m all about doing the work, but how about a little love?
Dots
I’ll leave you with this parting thought. You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. So go ahead. The dot will be there.
