February 28 2018

Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News

Wednesday February 28 2018. In today’s Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News: Inventory, the 401 housing corridor, mortgage interest rates, higher disposable incomes, population growth, student housing, Blackberry, unregulated mortgages, Googie Architecture, YTD LP:SP trends.

Inventory edging up

Every morning, part of my routine is to check into the Kitchener Waterloo Association of Realtors’s Matrix system and record how many listing are on the market in Kitchener Waterloo. At the beginning of the year we were at about 500. That increased to 550 at the end of January and then stayed there for most of February. Listings sold quickly but were replaced with new listing almost as quickly. Then last week, I noticed that the number of listings had increased to over 570.

What is driving prices up is lack of inventory.

There was a home sold recently that garnered 11 offers and went for 13% over list price. This is exceptional but not completely unexpected. This year so far is feeling a lot like last year.

Comparing the costs of average homes in the 401 corridor

Homebuyers from the GTA have been flocking to Waterloo Region, deciding that longer commute times are worth lower house prices. This story shows you what the average home looks like in ten markets along the 401.

What’s driving Canadian cities’ house prices?

A new study determined that about 75% of the increase can be attributed to conventional economic factors — including mortgage interest rates, higher disposable incomes and population growth.

Higher learning, higher living: Developers move into student housing

The shift capitalizes on the increasing willingness of students – or their boomer parents – to pay healthy rents for higher-end residences with every sort of amenity

2 reasons you still need staging in a seller’s market

• Staged home results in better photos. Photos are your home’s currency online, and the more appealing they are, the more views your listing will receive. A new listing gets three times more views in its first week on the market than at any time after that, so first impressions really matter.
• Staging allows buyers to understand how they would actually live in the home. The typical person shopping for a home isn’t a trained designer and won’t naturally envision how an empty space could function.

Updating your kitchen before the sale

The old saying “kitchens sell houses” is largely true. The kitchen is really the most important room of any home. It is where a house becomes a home. It’s where you entertain. It’s a room with a very important purpose – a room you cannot do without. Your kitchen is the focal point of a family.

BlackBerry Ltd.: Multiple IoT Plays Worth Investing in

Seeing a company like BlackBerry start appreciating in the stock price is a good feeling for those that have believed in the company’s prospects for years now. There are a variety of initiatives the company is working on that make BlackBerry an interesting investment.

What is the unregulated mortgage market?

Unlike private lenders, credit unions are, in fact, regulated – but at the provincial level as opposed to the federal level. So, credit unions aren’t subject to the stress test (though some choose to follow it). They offer mortgages that are competitive to bank and monoline lenders, and have become even more desirable in the wake of the recent stress tests. 

Googie: Architecture of the space age

The futurist design movement that divided critics and and swept the nation with space age coffee shops. George Jetson would like it.

The spreadsheet

If you follow this blog, you know that I keep a spreadsheet of all of the homes my clients visit. In essence, I use my clients to filter out the best properties and then I reflect that data back to them. It has proven to be a very effective way to gauge what is happening in the market, predicting successful offer prices and generally to be connected in real time to what’s happening.

The problem of real estate is that we are always looking back — we used “comps” when setting listing prices and when putting together offers. Using comps in a rising market makes it easy to sell but hard to buy.

In January, I only showed 25 homes.

• 4 of those are still on the market
• 3 were cancelled or expired without selling
• 2 are conditionally sold
• 16 sold

The average sold price to listing price was 97.62%. The lowest sold price/listing price was 93.62% and the highest was 109.78%. If you knock those out you get an average sold listing price to sold price of 98.35%

In February, I showed 46 homes.

• 21 are still on the market
• 1 was suspended
• 2 are conditionally sold
• 22 sold

Although these numbers will change as more homes sell, the average sold price to listing price is currently 107.14%

The highest was 127.33% and the lowest was 97.77%. Knock those out and the average is 106.60%

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