09Feb2010 – The Wiarton Willie Festival has come and gone for another year. This year it was much bigger with more events throughout the week. Lots of activities, entertainment, food and good times. We sponsored the “Singing Dogs” dogsled team this year to come and give demonstrations on Saturday. It was a cold and windy day, but the dogs didn’t seem to mind at all. Sunday’s weather was much nicer and the crowds came out for all to have fun. Here’s a pic of the dogs. 
. For all the information about the festival and to get updates on next year’s event, visit www.wiartonwillie.com
04Feb2010 – I’m sure someone must have coined a phase by now for the gap that occurs in blogs when the author gets wrapped up in the rest of life and neglects to do updates. Bloggers Block? eSabbatical? Who knows – anyway, moving on… So Wiarton Willie saw his shadow on Tuesday. 6 more weeks of winter! Wait a minute, that’s March 16th which is earlier than the official first day of spring. I guess it’s either an early spring or an early spring. I guess groundhogs can’t read calendars. To top that off, it was a totally overcast morning and still he saw his shadow?! May he’s getting senile. I’m just glad that Willie isn’t making real estate predictions. The spring market is upon us and things are starting to pick up. Interest rates are low, the economy is improving and everything is in place to make this a good year for the real estate market.
14Nov2009 – Did you ever see the movie Saturday the 14th? That’s ok, nobody else did either. It was a really bad spoof on “Friday the 13th”. Not sure why I’m bringing it up now other than I always remember it when the 14th falls on a Saturday. Anyway, on a real estate related note, our board just released the October stats which I found very interesting. The report can be read here: Stats200910.pdf. Turns out that October 2009 was a bit of a record month. Normally, things drop off pretty dramatically in the fall around here, but not this year. Activity levels remained high. Of course, the rest of the year was low so I suspect that now that there seems to be some good economic news on the TV, that people who had been putting off moving are coming out of the woodwork. I know that I’ve certainly sold just about everything I had listed (so if you’re looking to list, give me a call). What’s interesting is something that doesn’t show up in this report. Although the number of sales is up from last October, the number of new listings is down from last October. What does that mean? Existing inventory is being sold at a record pace, but people who might be interested in selling are still in the “fall is a bad time to sell” mentality. Well not this year. There is pent up demand and it’s not over yet. So let’s get your house listed and ride the wave.
16Sep2009 – And the kiddies are back to school, and as a result (I think) real estate is slow. There is always a slowdown in the first half of September that I’ve always blamed on parents spending time getting school figured out. Then things pick up and run not too badly until the end of October. I, for one, am looking forward to the changing colours and for the grass growth to slow down.
Royal Bank has issued another forecast document with a little different focus than the previous one. You can read it here.
08Sep2009 – Another summer come and gone – actually, from a weather perspective, it was the summer that never was. Kind of like having 3 Junes in a row. Maybe September will be great. From a real estate perspective, it was pretty much business as usual around here other than higher end waterfront properties and, oddly enough, vacant land. Sales in both those areas were way down. What the future brings is anybody’s guess, but I received a newsletter from the Royal Bank that provided their forcast for then next little while. Have a read here.
31Jul2009 – Heading into the long weekend… The weather finally looks decent – maybe summer is actually here. I receive notes periodically from Shelia Johns who is the local mortgage specialist with the Royal Bank. Here’s a link to RBC’s current mortgage rates. You’ll notice that the rates available through Shelia are better than what you’d get if you just walked into the branch. Rates just took another drop so check it out.
17Jul2009 – Well summer is in full swing. Sales ran pretty constant through May and June, but things are charging ahead in July – we love tourists around here. I received a newsletter from OREA (Ontario Real Estate Association) that was talking about green building and the new LEED initiatives around building standards. More on that at a later date. However it also contained this link to the Government of Canada website that talks about the various ecoENERGY Retrofit Grants. In there you’ll find all the information you’ll need to find out what’s covered and how to apply for the grants. I like to think of myself a fairly “green” person so I’m certainly happy to see all the focus on these kinds of initiatives over the past few years. To that end, I’ve been involved in the “Green Initiatives” committee with our local real estate board in an effort to try and make the business of real estate a little more environmentally responsible. As I’m sure you can imagine, real estate transactions create a lot of paper – the bulk of which gets shreaded (and hopefully recycled). Much of what we’ve done is to implement some paperless solutions so that the paper is not used in the the first place. Remember, the first R is Reduce since that is the first line of attack on being green.
10Jul2009 – I had a client email this week asking about a publication that another real estate company had given him talking about doom and gloom and how bad the market is. For sure, the economic situation in the world has had an impact on real estate in this area, but not as big as people are thinking. The local real estate board – The Realtors Association of Grey Bruce Owen Sound – published it’s statistics for June today and it paints a different picture. The Year To Date numbers are still down from 2008, but the June numbers in many cases are above last June. All indications are that the slump, small as it was, is over and things are on the upswing. The details of the report can be found here. RAGBOS June 2009 Stats. The associated media release with some graphical analysis can be found here. RAGBOS June 2009 Media Release.
I always caution people who read papers like the Toronto Star to make sure that they understand the differences between the real estate market in Toronto versus the market in Grey/Bruce – and there’s even considerable variation in the various municipalities in Grey/Bruce. As always, your best be for accurate local market information is to talk to your local real estate professional.
03Jul2009 – Oops, almost a month went by. The stats this week: For South Bruce Peninsula and Georgian Bluffs – Active Listings on Friday: 443, Sales This Week: 5.
Well, Wiarton managed to survive the Tragically Hip concert. This was a big event for this area with almost 15,000 people attending. Hopefully it will be a frequent occurance. Traffic and casual buyers have certainly increased now that the kids are our of school. Sales continue to be strong and even with a slow start to the year, our year to date numbers are now back up to what they were last year. I project that we’re going to surpass last year’s sales without any problem.
On a different note, if you’re looking for something to do for the community this summer, Habitat for Humanity is building 4 homes in Wiarton over the summer and are always looking for volunteers. It doesn’t matter what your experience is, they can use all the help they can get. They even supply boots, hardhats and any other equipment you need. If you are interested, visit the website at www.habitatgreybruce.com where you’ll find all the information you need as well as a volunteer registration form. I’ll be out there on July 27 and 28 so come out and lend a hand.
05Jun2009 – The stats this week: For South Bruce Peninsula and Georgian Bluffs – Active Listings on Friday: 419, Sales This Week: 8.
Finally a decently warm spring day. May seemed like April. Cottage properties really haven’t started to move yet so maybe the cold weather is to blame. Here’s some interesting numbers for May. Combining South Bruce Peninsula and Georgian Bluffs, there were 31 sales in May 2009 compared with 18 in 2008. Board wide numbers were 281 sales in May 2009 and 311 in May 2008. Hmmm… Seems like Wiarton is THE place to be. And who can argue really.
02Jun2009 – I’m going to skip the stats for this week – I don’t want you falling asleep on me. Instead I thought I tell you about “The Joys of Pricing Well“. There is a window of opportunity when you list your house for sale. It’s wide open for a few weeks and then it starts to close. After a couple of months, Market Staleness sets in and buyers start to ignore your property. I would say that after all the regular questions like “how many bedrooms does it have?”, the number one thing I get asked is “how long has it been listed for?”. If your property has been listed for more than 3 months, that immediately tells the buyer that the price is too high for the market. (As an aside, we’re talking about average houses here, not $500,000 waterfront homes – they have their own set of rules.) When the window is wide open, you want to attract as many potential buyers to your home as possible. For just about everybody, the first criterion when searching for a house is price. Even if they think your property looks perfect on the internet, most people won’t even bother booking a showing if it’s even 10% over their budget. So if your friendly neighbourhood broker advises you to list at $199,000 and you insist on listing at $219,000, get ready for a long wait. As the window closes, you can prop it open a bit with price reductions, but if you price it right from the start, you’ll be well positioned to be moving to your new home in as short a time as possible.
22May2009 – The stats this week: For South Bruce Peninsula and Georgian Bluffs – Active Listings on Friday: 428, Sales This Week: 13.
This week I was reminded of a common misconception about real estate agents. People think we make a salary. We don’t. It’s 100% commission. When I started in real estate, it was about 7 months before I actually saw a paycheque. All that time of course there are board dues, advertising expenses and whatever other expenses they might incur driving around and whatnot (not to mention groceries to buy). So remember when that agent is spending their time and money showing you properties or paying for newspaper ads or any other activity, that there’s no paycheque until a sale actually happens. That all may sound very doom and gloom for new agents getting into the business, but after one get’s established, sales do start to come in and for the most part, there is a fairly regular income; and besides, we really enjoy working with our clients. Spending a sunny warm May afternoon looking at properties on the Bruce Peninsula isn’t hard to take. (Ask me later if I still feel the same way after a rainy cold November afternoon 
15May2009 – The stats this week: For South Bruce Peninsula and Georgian Bluffs – roughly what I consider to be my primary service area, Active Listings on Friday: 434, Sales This Week: 9. That’s not bad for a week in May. The number of active listings continues to climb as we head towards the July peak. It won’t be until August that then number of properties selling and expiring out-strips the number of new listings coming up for sale. Buyers continue to be cautious and take longer to make a decision about buying, however the rock bottom interest rates are making it very attractive for first time home owners to enter the market (mind you the banks are being much more careful with who they lend money to.)
May 24 is traffic is upon us and once again I find myself having to look both ways before crossing the street – it’s just like being back in K/W. Too bad the weather forecast isn’t better. I’m certainly glad I left my camping on Victoria Day weekend days far behind. Welcome to all the tourists to the area. Even in not so perfect weather, it’s still a beautiful place to visit – hey, want to buy a cottage?
11May2009 – Today I was asked again “how’s the market?”. Lately I get this question almost daily. The reality is the same as it always has been – if you price your property competitively, it will sell. This year, pricing competitively means dropping the price back to 2007 levels. A quick look at the stats for our local real estate board (all of Grey/Bruce) shows that average prices have fallen back to 2007. The average price of a single family home in Q1 of 2007 was $199,447. In Q1 2008 it was $211,835 and in Q1 2009 it was $197,091. That’s about a 7% drop from last year. So if you want to price your property competitively, look at what comparable properties were selling for last year and drop it down by 7%. (and if you were on the market last year and didn’t sell, drop it down more). The good news is that the dropping seems to have stopped. There are buyers out there, but they have more selection to pick from so you have to make your property the most attractive.
By the way buyers, all this combined with the incredibly low interest rates should suggest something… hmmm…