Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News
June 5, 2019
Wednesday June 5, 2019. In this week’s Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News: weekend psychology, walking tours, home prices, Fair Housing Plan, Airbnb, hotel occupancy rates, open houses, google, smart homes, Alberta, San Francisco, 10,000 steps…
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Weekend psychologist
A lady came through my weekend open house. She stated the obvious, that the place is dated. I agreed and pointed out that the home only had one owner since 1978 which means datedness in this case is a good thing. When she came up from the basement she said it was too small and smelled like cat pee. To which I said, I don’t think the owner had a cat. I think it’s just a little musty. We agreed to disagree about that, at least I did. But then when the negativeness continued, I decided to see if I could put some of my expensive sales training to work. I used empathy. I tried to understand why this negative lady was so negative and it turns out that she had just gone through a life changing event and was still riding in its wake. Divorce is tough. I’ve heard people say that divorce is good for real estate, but I wouldn’t agree. Working with buyers or sellers that are divorcing is really tough. They are emotionally unstable and financially fragile.
Buying and selling real estate is always an emotional event.
I ended up having a nice chat with the lady, giving her some helpful advice about where she might find the home she is looking for. When she left, she was in a much better mood and I felt good about our meeting. My sales training in amateur psychology has had positive results.
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Step to it with Waterloo walking tours
Get your steps in and discover how Waterloo developed from a grist mill site to a city, and enjoy the ambience of one of Uptown Waterloo’s fifty heritage buildings, by signing up for a walk tour. I especially would like to do:
- Tour 4 focusing on Waterloo in the 1920s and 1930s and the end of locally owned companies.
- Tour 5 discussing modern Waterloo, its birth as a City in 1948, its rebirth as an urban shopping centre in 1960, and its continuing evolution.
3
How have Kitchener-Waterloo home prices changed since the introduction of the Fair Housing Plan?
In April 2017, the former provincial Liberal government introduced a 16-part plan designed to balance Ontario’s housing market by cooling rampant price growth and speculative demand, and boosting rental supply. However, except for the GTA, home prices have continued to rise – 5% in Kitchener, 3% in Waterloo.
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How much is Airbnb lowering hotel prices and occupancy rates?
A few weeks ago I posted an article here saying that the future of real estate investing is Airbnbs. Now, here’s an article showing how the explosive growth of Airbnbs are impacting the hotel industry.
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The Sunday Open House 2-4
I’ve written many times on my real estate blog about the several purposes of holding weekend open houses. I don’t agree with a lot of the points of this article, but I like the statistics.
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When Google locks you out and turns up the heat
An especially annoying side effect of Google Cloud’s downtime recently was that Nest-branded smart home products for some users just failed to work. Essentially, because of a cloud storage outage, people were prevented from getting inside their homes, using their AC, and monitoring their babies.
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Everything you ever wanted to know about Alberta
Recently on this news blog, I posted an article saying that Canadians were more likely to visit Mexico or Florida than neighbouring provinces. I happened to be out in Alberta last summer, so this article needed a quick read.
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I left my mind in San Francisco
Here are 13 mind-blowing facts that show just how expensive San Francisco really is.
9
Step down
Over the Victoria Day weekend, my wife and I hiked some of the great trails in Southwestern Ontario. I chose “loop-trails” of 7 – 15 kilometres and over the five day period we logged on average over 10 kilometres per day. As I was automatically keeping track on my iphone with a built in app, I noted that we hiked well over 10,000 steps per day. With that in mind, I found interesting this article discussing the unban myth of 10,000 steps a day. Turns out there is no health benefit for doing more than 7,500 steps!
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What to read next:
- You don’t need an agent.
- Last week on Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News: boondockers, apartment towers, exurbs, pets, small issues, dimensions, weed, world music map, one-star reviews…
