Misunderstanding cap rate, short for capitalization rate, is a favourite pastime of many realtors and novice investors. Too often I witness a lack of understanding of investment analysis within the real estate agent community. My concern is that novice investors may be making purchase decisions with inaccurate expectations for return on their investments. This article examines the relationship between real …
A CTV News piece about the Hottest Ottawa Neighbourhoods and the Ottawa real estate market in July 2020 came to my attention this week. A local Realtor provided data and insights into prevailing conditions that continue to favour sellers. Here’s a link to the piece: CTV News Article & Video Reading through the article I could not help but cringe …
As people got used to wearing masks and keeping their distance, and with businesses and services slowly opening up, buyers and sellers stormed back into the real estate market in July. It was one hot July. I represented five sellers. Every one of them received multiple offers and sold way over asking price. Here are the amounts over asking: $40,000 …
Episode 2 : How does an in-ground swimming pool impact the value of your property (or one you’re thinking of buying)? Oh, also… it was Happy Canada Day!
This article is the first in a series examining and illustrating the impact of various factors on the returns generated by a real estate investment. If you remember one thing, let it be that the formula is more complicated than reported in the write-ups for virtually all investment property listings. For example, the “cap rate”, or the cash flow calculated …
Is Ottawa’s proposed Shared Equity Mortgage “plan” a good idea? Okay, so I only know what I saw on CBC News the other night. They reported that the Canadian Government has yet to work out the details of the “plan”. We can’t fully assess it until we have those details… but the concept seems misguided to me in many ways: …
Talking about Ottawa condo prices with one of my clients recently, I realised it’s been 6 years since I looked at the average selling price trend for older vs. newer condo apartments in Ottawa. Here’s the article from 2012: Are New or Re-Sale Condos a Better Investment? Fast forward to today; let’s take a look at the average selling price …
Have you read the CBC article from April 25th about Ottawa real estate’s “Perfect Storm” intensifying “Bidding Wars”? I’d like to go through this article and shed some light on a few of the pronouncements it makes. You can read the original article here: CBC Article: Bidding Wars Intensify It’s fun working in real estate because almost everybody finds it interesting …
Law makers are waking up to some of the old school sales tactics that are unfortunately still common in the real estate business. CBC’s Marketplace ran their story (episode 44 – you can Google it if you haven’t seen it) about Realtors in Toronto working both sides of a transaction for the benefit of themselves (and buyer customers or clients) …
Your home hits the market and bam! You receive multiple offers – how excellent is that? And now you have to decide which offer to work with, or to accept. A quick glance reveals that the prices are all very close, the closing dates are all acceptable, and there is little to obviously set one of the offers apart from …
The irrevocable time on an offer – what does it mean? If you’re making an offer on a property, what time frame should you set? If you’re selling a property, how should you treat the irrevocable date on offers you receive? Should you state a requirement regarding irrevocable times in your listing? The irrevocable date and time on an Agreement …