July 10, 2019 Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News

Zip scooter
Zip
Wednesday July 10, 2019. In this week’s Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News: learning Mandarin, real estate statistics, Cambridge broker keeps licence, townhouse ownership, school districts, electric scooters, Canada home price growth, tourist maps, reverse marketing…

Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News

July 10, 2019 

Wednesday July 10, 2019. In this week’s Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News:  learning Mandarin, real estate statistics, Cambridge broker keeps licence, townhouse ownership, school districts, electric scooters, Canada home price growth, tourist maps, reverse marketing… 

1

表達你自己

With summer here, and with the typical slow down, I have time to work on one of my hobbies, re-learning Mandarin Chinese. The pressure is on to get back up to a functional level as I will be visiting my second favourite country in the world in the fall – Taiwan. There is really something magical about the place. I can’t wait to get back. 

I lived in Taiwan for nearly a decade and at that time I studied at a university and then a private college and finally on my own. Though, it wasn’t until I got a job in a Chinese office that my Mandarin skills showed real progress. 

But now it is different. I think I might have found learning a foreign language a little easier with the tools we have on hand today. Instead of using textbooks and children’s novels, there are flash card apps and podcasts and Youtube videos that I visit on a daily basis. I’ve also started journal writing a few hundred words a day and translating this through Google Translate to give me the words, phrases and the sentences that I use most often.

2

June’s numbers

  • 658 residential properties sold in June. That’s 8.8 per cent more than in June 2018
  • 3,154 homes have sold in Kitchener-Waterloo and area during the first half of this year. 1.4 per cent more home have sold this year so far compared to 2018
  • $533,619 is the average price of residential properties sold. That’s 8.9 per cent higher than June 2018
  • 888 properties were listed for sale. That’s 4.3 per cent more than in June 2018
  • The average days it took to sell a home in June was 20 days, compared to 22 days in June 2018.

Read all of the statistics here. 

3

Cambridge real estate broker strikes deal, keeps licence

The Cambridge Re/Max broker was accused of arranging a private sale for his parents to buy a Waterloo home for $200,000 less than its assessed tax value, and $300,000 less than its approximate market value. He gets a fine.

4

10 reasons you should buy a townhouse

Townhouses, especially freehold townhouses, in my opinion are the best real estate most people can buy. They should be seriously considered if you are:

  • First time home buyer
  • Unsure how long you will live in your home
  • Real estate investor
  • Down-sizer/empty-nester
  • Professional (couple or single) without children

5

Why are school districts so important in real estate?

If you buy a home in a great school district and that school district is consistently doing well year after year, there’s a higher chance that when you sell, it will still be doing well, which will bring a higher pool of buyers to your property. 

6

Kitchener scooter company gets green light to operate in B.C. City

ZIP dockless electric scooters will soon be making the rounds in Kelowna, B.C.

7

Canadian housing beats U.S in terms of price growth

Canadians have made much better returns on their homes than Americans have since the start of the century. Since 2001, the weakest of the Canadian markets beat even the strongest of the U.S. markets on house price growth.

8

136 maps reveal where tourists and locals take photos in cities across the globe

Few factors draw the line between tourist and local more starkly than where they go and don’t go: no matter the city, one will sooner or later hear talk of places locals know that tourists don’t, places locals don’t go because tourists do know about them, places tourists go when they want to act like locals, places locals go when they want to act like tourists…

9

Reverse marketing

The brokers and real estate sales trainers will tell you that everyone is a potential customer. They will advise you to knock on 100 doors a day, tweet five times a day and do a facebook post every morning and night. They will tell you to take names at open houses and build out your database. Real estate brokers and sales trainers will tell you to put your database on a drip campaign, send stuff every chance you get. They will tell you to farm a certain neighbourhood or niche market and to be in real estate magazines on instagram and youtube. There is more that they will tell you, a lot more but I don’t know what it is as I stopped listening to this type of broadcast/shotgun/interruption marketing advice years ago.   

Doesn’t it make more sense to build your marketing strategy around the type of client you want to attract? That’s what this is. Reverse marketing. And it works fine for me. 

10

What to read next:

When should you accept the first offer?

Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News: ion, google, changes, housing affordability, summer selling, Microsoft, Ottawa’s LRT, most livable cities, summertime slowdown… 

Written By
More from Keith
Mid-year year to date and other KW real estate statistics
Numbers lie. It is hard to grasp what is really going on...
Read More
Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *