Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News
April 10, 2019
Wednesday April 10, 2019. In this week’s Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News: winter market, spring market, downtown Kitchener development, March stats, homebuyers, agents, downsizing, tech clusters, World Bank open data, Philadelphia, jerks, negotiators…
1
Winter market, Spring market
As we head into the Spring market, if you’ve haven’t been paying attention to our local market in the first three months of 2019 here is what you need to know:
- In the under $500k single family home market, agents are pricing low and encouraging (and receiving) competing offers.
- The overall volume of sales is down by about 5 per cent.
- Average prices are up by about 3.5 per cent.
With inventory levels still low, I expect that as the spring market heats up these trends will likely continue and spread into the higher price brackets.
2
$80 million project underway in downtown Kitchener
Construction has begun on the block bounded by King, Charles and Cameron streets and Madison Avenue in Kitchener. The project includes two towers of 19 and 23 storeys, with retail at street level and 488 rental units, including up to 10 affordable housing units.
3
The slides of March
There were 511 residential sales in March, a decrease of 5.7 per cent versus the same month last year, and down 7 per cent compared to the previous ten-year average for March. However, the average sale price of all residential properties sold in March increased 3.4 per cent to $505,855 compared to March 2018.
All in all, March is pretty much a repeat of February — few sales, higher prices. Let’s see if this continues into the spring market.
4
What home buyers want from their agents
A few years ago I asked an agent that I really respect what the secret of his success was. He said, “if a client asks for something, they must want it for a reason so I give it to them.” Clients have be confident in their decisions and before they can do that they have to trust themselves and their agents. With that in mind, here are the things that home buyers say they want from their agents.
5
The dos and don’ts of downsizing
There are a few things you should and should not do when thinking about downsizing. Here they are.
6
Waterloo is part of the second largest technology cluster in North America
Our community is the western anchor of the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor, which boasts more than 15,000 tech companies, 200,000 tech workers and 5,200 tech startups. In just 105km (65mi), we have 16 universities and colleges and over seven million people. A global centre of talent, growth, innovation and discovery, the Corridor is North America’s largest technology cluster outside of Silicon Valley.
7
World Bank open data
Do you ever wonder about how Canada stacks up against other countries in terms of population growth, GDP, inflation, education and a bunch of other indicators? Who doesn’t, right? Here is the World Bank Open Data.
8
27 interesting facts about Philadelphia
I’m hoping to visit Washington DC this summer and since my friend Joe lives in Philadelphia, I think we’ll visit there too. It has a lot of history.
9
Being a jerk does not make you a good negotiator
I recently bought another property. Naturally, I think property is the best investment anyone can make and I also think that I am a good (but not great) property investor as I have always made money with my real estate investments.
The deal I did was out of our Kitchener-Waterloo market and I know from past experience that how we do real estate in KW is very different than how they do it in different markets. Generally speaking, I think here in Waterloo Region most of us, most of the time approach real estate in the spirit of cooperation and as such we communicate in a straightforward manner. This of course is not always the case here and certainly wasn’t the case in my recent out of market deal. But I took my own advice and stayed calm, stayed focus and unemotional and got to where I wanted to go.
It could have been so much easier.
10
What to read next:
- How to maintain a home in show ready condition
- Last week on Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News: big news, e-scooters, glovebox, goose watch, mortgage insurance, fast-growing, world map of religions, the office, airbnb…
