Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News

September 26 2018

Wednesday September 26 2018. In this week’s Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News: the autumn market, biking in Waterloo Region, real estate forecasted, bad real estate advice, van life, low cost internet, urban animals, world real estate prices, access to sales data…

Autumn, when every leaf is a flower

I was talking with a Realtor friend the other day. He’s in Mississauga and I’m in KW (of course). I always like to check in with my Realtor friends about the market and what they think is going on and going to happen. I asked him, like all Realtors like to ask each other, “How you doing this year?” He said that Autumn is usually his busiest time but this year it seems slow to start, the Autumn market has not ramped up yet.

We could blame the great weather last week but truth is I have clients waiting for a great house in a wonderful neighbourhood but great houses in wonderful neighbourhoods are just not materializing. We blame the lack of listings, the high price of real estate and maybe the high volume of sales over the previous two years that took care of demand. (I don’t really think so). The other thing is, real estate agents were so busy over the past two years with hyper activity. Maybe this is the normal pace of things.

How Waterloo Region compare to other cities when it comes to cycling

Waterloo Region’s three cities have about 500 kilometres of bike lanes and off-road trails. About 1.1 per cent of people in the region commute by bike, but the three cities vary widely.

The forecast for the rest of the year

The autumn market is here, which traditionally brings higher prices and more activity, but higher interest rates are going to keep some people on the sidelines this year.

The worst home buying and selling advice realtors and mortgage brokers have heard

What’s tricky about bad advice is that often it sounds good. What’s also tricky is that bad advice is sometime the best advice you’re going to get.

Van life and home appreciation

There is a lot to be said about living out of a van but living out of 60-square feet does come with its challenges. Here are three.

Kitchener startup takes on Bell in fight over low-cost internet

Cloudwifi is fighting for access to ‘inside wires’ in multi-residential buildings

Is that a racoon in my kitchen?

Autumn is here and a lot of urban animals are looking for a nice warm winter home. As I live in an older home in a mature neighbourhood, over the years I’ve had squirrels, mice, and a rat enter my home. I have also had a family of racoons stroll though my yard and a family of skunks build a home under my back deck. Take this survey and help rank Canada’s peskiest urban animal .

Only one country has higher-valued homes than Canada

Trends across economies are very varied – price growth is rapid in Hong Kong, the Netherlands and Mexico but negative in Canada, Italy, Brazil, Turkey and Sweden. Overall, price growth was positive globally, albeit at a more subdued rate than previously recorded. Home prices increased 2.7 per cent annually, slowing from the 4 per cent pace observed in 2017’s second quarter, according to Oxford Economics’ world house price indicator based on more than 20 markets around the world.

Open the floodgates

Just like travel agents used to be the gatekeepers to most things travel, like resorts, airline tickets and the newest exotic destinations, real estate agents used to be all things real estate, like new listings, price changes and sold data. Over the past twenty years this has slowly eroded away for us but ‘sold data’ – (what homes sold for) stayed mostly secret and in the hands of Realtors — you needed to ask a Realtor if you wanted to know what your neighbour’s home sold for. ‘Privacy’ was the reason given. It took a seven-year battle between the Competition Bureau and the Toronto Real Estate Board to finally pry that out of our cold cold hands.

Of course, access to information in the internet age is what everyone has come to expect. Canada is way behind other countries like the USA and the UK when it comes to this, in terms of real estate, so it is about time, long overdue. Home buyers and home sellers need to know that they are making good decisions when it comes to selling and buying real estate. What better way, than to have real time information on prices?