Today is August 25th 2016 and this is the 32nd episode of the Marshall Report. Welcome to the podcast.
In this weeks episode:
1. Autumn real estate
2. Six things about selling
3. Buskers
4. Bigger, higher, smaller and more multitudinous
5. Closing techniques
6. House of cards
7. Goodbye golf
8. The couple who retired after not buying a house
9. Shopping at Costco
10. Facing difficulties
Lets get on with the show.
Autumn real estate
Summer is winding down, which means real life and real estate will be winding up again. Real estate’s second season, the echo boom is about to begin.
We never really know in real estate how things are going to go. Will September and October be a repeat of April and May? Or will things have calmed down and a balance restored. I don’t think so, but I never would have predicted the crazy late winter, spring and early summer that we had. I leave the predictions to pundits, fortune tellers and economists.
The autumn is almost as good as the springtime to sell and buy homes. Real estate never stops. There is always someone buying or selling, but trends do happen. I am refreshed and ready to go. Bring it on, I say.
I’m really thrilled about the popularity of this podcast. Over 1000 downloads now. It keeps on growing and I think improving. It is a labour of love. I love doing it. I love learning new things and frankly learning podcasting was easier than learning blogging.
I felt the same way when I started my real estate blog back in 2010 – I liked the novelty and the independence and I learned what to do and what not to do. But it took a lot longer to get any feedback about that. I’m talking two or three years, before anyone contacted me and said, ‘hey I’ve been reading your blog and I would like you to be my agent. But the podcast is about half a year old and once every week or two someone says that they listen to it. That is so cool. I think it is more person than blogging. I’m in your earbuds.
Question of the week:
What is the hardest thing about selling a house?
This year we are experiencing a seller’s market in KW. We have fewer listing than ever and more sales. This year, I like to say, that a monkey could sell a house, (and many do). But selling a house for the home seller is not an easy thing to do sometimes. For different sellers, they find different challenges. I wrote about that here.
Buskers
The annual Waterloo Busker Carnival starts today. Like last year, it will be held behind Waterloo City Hall. Come out and see world record holders, jugglers, unicyclists, balloon scalpturists, chalk artists, contortionists, fire breathers, acrobats, rope walkers and other daredevils. The festival has been running since 1989. It is a big event. Nearly 80,000 people attend and it is reputed to be one of the premier busker carnivals not just in Canada but around the world. It is always fun, but a little sad as it signals to me the end of summer.
Bigger, higher, smaller and more multitudinous
Those are words to describe what is happening in our uptown south (or maybe soon to be called midtown) and our Kitchener downtown north high-rise condos. Specifically, the new developers of 155 Caroline have gone to council requesting higher heights and denser densities. VanMar Constructors Inc. wants to increase the height of the undeveloped condo at 155 Caroline St. by four storeys to 23 storeys, and increase the density from 192 units and 264 bedrooms to 207 units and 300 bedrooms.
At 100 Victoria, after being delayed 18 months by neighbourhood concerns, a provincial tribunal last week approved Momentum Developments’ plans for a large condominium with two towers and more than 300 units. It’s a big big project.
Closing business
There are lots of other sales close techniques, some are subtle, some we recognize instantly, some we don’t. I personally make it a game when in contract negotiations with another real estate agent or when buying a big ticket item to watch for the closes. I make a mental note of the ones I identify. We’ve all seen many of them before.
Over the past two decades and with the internet providing information buyers need, the roles of salespeople has changed. When choosing a real estate agent to help you buy or sell your home, the best ones, in my opinion are “advisor” types, not “salesman” types. I wrote about closing techniques here.
House of cards
Here’s a captured thought.
One in 18 working Canadians has a job that’s related to residential real estate. It wasn’t always this way.
Goodbye golf
I didn’t go golfing this summer. I didn’t golf last summer either. I used to golf all the time. I grew up golfing. Everyone in my family golfs. I got my first set of clubs for my 13th birthday. I used to golf with my dad and then the rest of my family and then with my friends and at company tournaments. I golfed when I lived in Asia, where the courses were lush and green and the caddies wore conical hats and the clubs were on a monorail that wound through the course.
I golfed at a course in the Philippines called the Whack Whack Golf and Country Club, which is the best named golf course in the world in my opinion.
The golf industry boomed in the 1990s and early 2000s, prompting property developers to use golf course as amenities to sell homes. My great uncle who doesn’t even golf has lived in a gated golf community for the past 30 years.
But according to the National Golf Foundation, participation in golf has dropped 20% since 2003. Seems like I am not the only one who doesn’t have time for golf. I pretty much quit golf when the kids were young and my summer weekends were taken up with soccer tournaments and kids stuff. A round of golf takes at least five hours to play.
And homebuilders and property developers are now moving away from golf and onto new types of recreational amenities to lure buyers. Manmade lakes and agricultural or ’garden communities’ are starting to sprout up.
They have it all figured out
It’s a cruel and beautiful world, no more so than on the internet. Last week a 30-something couple who got rich and retired by not joining what they call the ‘home ownership cult’ came under fire, flaming fire in comments on the internet. Sometimes the idea is alright but the execution is all wrong.
Here is the back story
They retired last year with more than a million bucks and are now traveling the world living on $30-40K a year in investment dividends. Before that, they had saved $500,000 and were about to buy a house and then changed their mind and invested that money, continued to live frugally and doubled their money in four years.
Here is where things went off the rails
It is surprising to me that a story that should be so feel good and optimistic should have such a negative backlash. There are lots of digital nomads out there living in places like say Vietnam or Thailand but making U.S. Dollars. I think that is great. I wish there were a way I could find to do that myself.
But this couple are so obnoxiously happy and so proudly pontificating, it’s maddening. Their website is like a smug shrine, like facebook on steroids, posing and showing ‘how great are we!’ They claim that you can do it too, but the math doesn’t make sense. How does the average person save half a million dollars and how do you really double that in four years?
But is it distrust or envy that has inspired so many negative comments? Is it the millennial’s frustration with the housing market and maybe the job market or is it the required frugal living that has everyone out of sorts and up in arms. I don’t know. Personally, I think their contrarian concept and their die-hard disciple should be applauded. But they know, they admit, they predicted that preaching from sandy beaches and exotic backdrops was going to bring out the haters.
When I go to their website I think, well this would all make more sense if they were selling something, but it looks like they are just looking for our approval and sadly they are not getting it. If it were me, I would be quietly drinking a local beer and reading a trashy novel with my feet in the sand. I wouldn’t need you to know that I had it all figured out.
Call to action
Buying a house is like shopping at Costco. If you see something you like, don’t hesitate. Buy it. It won’t be there when you come back next time.
Parting thought
Sometimes we face difficulties not because we are doing something wrong, but because we are doing something right.
