In this video, I talk about the top-5 showing roadblocks that you want to avoid in order to sell your condo quickly and for top-dollar.

1) UNCOOPERATIVE TENANTS
If you have a tenant living in the condo you are trying to sell it can sometimes be a roadblock to showings. Tenants of course must receive 24 hours notice and give permission before any real estate agent can enter the property. Before you list your property, talk to your tenant about the showing process, and communicate to them your expectations. This will go along way to helping put them at ease and hopefully they will be as co-operative as possible.

2) UNRESPONSIVE AGENTS
The listing agent for your property must be able to provide lightning quick responses to inquiries from other agents and potential buyers. If an agent is not available or too slow to return phone calls, agents and buyers will move on to other properties.

3) UNRESPONSIVE BROKERAGE
It’s not just important to have a your listing agent respond quickly to inquiries, it’s equally important for the listing agent’s office to respond to requests for showings from buyer agents. Some real estate companies are closed in the evenings or sometimes on weekends making it difficult or impossible for showings to be booked on short notice.

4) MISSING KEYS
Another major showing roadblock are missing or hard to find keys. If an agent cannot find the keys to your condo quickly and easily, they may just move on and pass over your property.

5) NO PARKING
Parking downtown is always an issue. Some agents have been known to avoid showing units in certain buildings because parking is too difficult to find or it’s too expensive! If this is the case in your building, find an alternative and help other agents by telling them where they can park.

I hope you enjoyed this video about the top-5 showing roadblocks to avoid. If you are thinking about selling your condo and buying a house this year, I’d love to help. For more information contact me.

Selling your condo can be a surprisingly time consuming and emotionally draining task, especially if you’ve never done it before. Having a plan from the start and working with an experienced professional can help you avoid mistakes and get your home sold quickly and for top-dollar.

In this video, I give you my top-5 most common seller mistakes to avoid.

1) WRONG PRICE
Getting the right price is crucial to a successful sale. Pricing your condo too high will mean your property will likely sit on the market and ultimately sell for less than it could have.

Pricing your property too low means you may get an offer quickly, but you are leaving money on the table.

Pricing your condo is part art and part science. Often you won’t know you’ve priced it wrong until it’s too late.

2) NO PHOTOS
A picture is worth a 1000 words, yet thousands of listings still do not have any photos, let alone virtual tours and videos. Today’s buyers want instant gratification and they are not easily impressed. Having professional looking photos is absolutely essential to a successful sale.

3) POOR STAGING
So many sellers underestimate the importance of staging and how much it can contribute to your bottom line. Staging will help attract more buyers and more potential offers on your property. Your goal should be to make your condo look better than 95% of the condos on the market. Only the top-5% of all listings get top dollar.

4) SHOWING ROADBLOCKS
Showing roadblocks are anything the impedes potential buyers and real estate agents from showing your property. These can include un-co-operative tenants, unresponsive agents, and missing or hard to find keys. All these things can hurt your sale and ultimately leave less money in your pocket. For more info on this point, check out my video of the top-5 most common showing roadblocks.

5) UNCLEAR ROOM FUNCTIONS
Every room in your condo should have a clearly defined function. Keep it simple and don’t try to do too much with each space. A buyer should be able to instantly recognize what each room is to be used for and start to picture themselves living in your condo. Staging can go a long way to making sure this happens.

I hope you enjoyed my top-5 tips for staging your condo for sale. If you are thinking about selling your condo and buying a house this year, I’d love to help. For more information contact me.

So what happened? Seems to me the person who bought for $945K in March is up at least $100K in just 3 months time. Also it occurs to me that selling by assignment is a crap shoot at best – buyers and sellers alike are dealing with very limited an imperfect information and ‘fair market value’ is a very hard thing to determine.

This blog post is really designed as an illustration to show why I preach to my investor clients that the best time to sell your pre-construction purchased condo is 6-12 months after registration.

Reasons:

1. 1 year is the length of a typical lease. Assuming a 3-6 month occupancy period for most condos, selling 6-12 months after building registration will align perfectly with the end of that lease.
2. 6-12 months gives time for the dust to settle in the building (literally), and for the common areas to be completed. Common areas do add value to your property, make no mistake!
3. Allows time for the resale values of a building to get established. Much of this is driven by supply and demand principles – many investors selling at first, and few buyers aware of the building because it’s brand new.
4. To qualify for the HST/GST rebate as an investor, most lawyers will tell you you need a 12 month lease signed.

We see this pattern time and time again with new buildings when they first are finished – those who sell first tend to undersell. Those who are patient and wait reap the rewards.

Questions or comments? Thinking about selling your investment condo this year? Contact me.

As a seller, you might think, why would I ever not want to take advantage of the MLS system with its massive exposure to buyers and Realtors across the GTA, by listing my property exclusively with one brokerage? There may in fact be several reasons, for example:

1. Individual privacy. Your name is published on MLS listings (at least in the ‘back end’ system that all Realtors have access to). If you are a public figure you may not want 30,000 Realtors in the GTA seeing that your house is up for sale and booking a visit ‘just to look around’.
2. Shhh…Don’t tell the neighbours. For a variety of reasons, sometimes you just don’t want to announce to your neighbours that you are moving. Putting your property on the MLS is a sure fire way to let them know. An exclusive listing
3. Pre-arranged transactions. Many exclusive listings are sold before they are actually listed. These are cases where a Realtor connects a buyer with a seller behind the scenes, puts together a deal, then simply ‘lists’ and reports the sale on the same day.
4. Limited showings. Listing exclusively likely means you will not get as many showings as you might with an MLS listing, but it also means the showings you do get are likely very serious buyers and targeted buyers. These are people who have received personal invitations from your Realtor to view the property, or they are likely clients of your Realtors’ brokerage. It also means you won’t have any looky-loo neighbours coming by to see how you’ve arranged your furniture and how your bathroom reno turned out.

Listing exclusively is not for everyone, in reality it is a solution for a very small percentage of sellers, but there are clearly valid reasons for this option. If you are interested in listing your condo exclusively, contact me today to discuss this option. My brokerage, Re/Max Condos Plus, is one of the few brokerages in the city that has the size, specialization, and enough ‘top-gun’ agents on the roster to get exclusive deals done quickly and efficiently.

In a seller’s market, where a monkey could sell a condo, agents and sellers will quite often pull a price out of the air without giving it any thought. In a buyer’s market, it’s back to the fundamentals of marketing: Product, Place, Promotion, and PRICE! Yes, choosing the correct asking price is a very important piece of the marketing mix for selling your property.

If you over-price your property, you are shooting yourself in the foot. You will get less potential buyers through your property, less offers, and potentially no offers at all. Inevitably you will have to reduce your price but by then your listing will be ‘stale’ and most potential buyers will have moved on.

You might think there are no risks associated with under-pricing, but there are. Underpricing a listing in a seller’s market results in multiple offers and potentially an artificially inflated selling price. Underpricing in a buyer’s market when there are less active buyers and more listings means you could end up selling your property for less than it is actually worth, but you would never even know it because there just isn’t the same critical mass of buyers out there.

Bottom line, you (and more importantly your agent) need to be able to defend your asking price when a buyer’s agent comes a calling and says, “How flexible is the seller on the price? It is a buyer’s market after all…”. Questions or comments? Thinking of selling? Contact me.

For Buyers:

It’s already much better now than it was just 2 months ago. Inventory is up, some sellers are starting to get a grip on reality, and you actually have multiple properties to choose from. Things will continue to get better as inventory continues to rise along with interest rates which will increase supply and decrease demand at the same time. Don’t rush into anything. Now is not the time to pay higher for a property than the last guy did. Buy smart, buy for the long term.

For Sellers:

Understand that the market has changed. Price your property for what it is worth and don’t follow the “price it low for multiple offers” strategy. Remember that if you want to command top dollar in terms of selling price, your property must show better than all the other properties on the market – proper staging and marketing is vital. Better to list now than wait till Summer. There is still time to close before the HST kicks in July 1st. Want to talk about selling your condo? Contact me.

Investors:

Keep buying if the property makes sense and the neighbourhood has good long-term upside potential. Stop buying if you are hoping to flip for a quick profit or if you are over extended.

Questions or comments? Thinking about buying, selling, or investing and want the advice of a professional who understands the market? Contact me

On the resale side, buyers and sellers alike are trying to get their closings in before June 30th even though the impact will not be nearly as great as on the new build side. Let’s just say that all the real estate lawyers in the city will be VERY busy the last week of June and completely bored the first week of July!

Here’s what the actual impact of the HST will look like for both buyers and sellers of a typical $400K transaction

For Sellers, closing before July 1st will save you 8% on your real estate fees (assuming fees at 5%, that’s $1600). Legal fees on a typical sale will be about $1000 (HST would be $80 extra here).

For Buyers, closing before July 1st will save you 8% on your legal fees (assuming fees at $1500, that’s $120).

Other miscellaneous expenses to think about that will cost more come July 1st include home inspections and moving expenses.

Tip For Buyers: If you are buying a condo, check the status certificate to ensure that the budget includes an accounting for the HST and the impact it will have on the services the condo uses regularly. If the condo board has not planned for the increase, this is not a good sign!

Tip For Buyers and Sellers: Secure your lawyer early to handle your closing as many will be ‘booked up’ for the last week of June and may refuse you service.

Questions or comments? Feel free to contact me.

People contact me just about every day and ask me about assignments - I want to buy an assignment! I want to sell my condo by assignment! The truth is, most people have no idea what is involved when buying and selling an assignment. When the Average Joe learns just a fraction of what there is to know about assignments, 95% of the time Average Joe ends up returning to the comparatively simple world of pre-sales and resales.

So for all the sellers of assignments, as well as those who may be thinking about buying a condo by assignment, I’d like to introduce to the the top-5 reasons why many assignment listings never sell:

1. No Market Exposure. You are not allowed to advertise assignments on the MLS. Many assignment listings don’t sell because no one knows about them!
2. Lawyers. Most lawyers hate assignment deals. They often look for reasons to kill the deal – and with assignments, you don’t have to look to hard.
3. Price. This is probably the #1 reason why many assignment listings don’t sell. You can’t price an assignment like a resale property. Investors buy assignments and investors don’t pay current market value for property!
4. Closing Day Too Far Away. Buying a pre-sale condo then trying to flip it a month later is a fool’s game. The unit must be at or very close to occupancy so that market value can be accurately predicted and the investor can safely determine if they are getting a deal.
5. Closing Costs. Did you get your closing costs capped by the developer when you first bought your condo? If not, there is no way to tell exactly what they might be. Buyers of assignments need some degree of certainty as to what closing costs they will incur, otherwise they will move on.

Bottom line, assignments are not for everyone, but for the right buyer and seller, working with a good Realtor and co-operative lawyers, they can be a fantastic way to transact in real estate. Questions about assignments? Contact me.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the building lately as I have a couple of clients who are keen on the building. The suites are impressive and already Glas is commanding one of the highest price-per-square foot values in the area (King and Spadina). I expect resales to be in the mid $500s for most suites in the weeks ahead.

Today there are already about a half-dozen suites that have hit the MLS system as standard resale properties (building is registered, owners can sell and advertise at will).

This building is the first completed project under Brad Lamb’s development company.  Features like 9′ exposed concrete ceilings, extra large balconies (on some units) with gas lines, stainless steel appliances including gas cooking, granite counters, sliding barn-style doors, laminate floors throughout, floor to ceiling glass-wall construction, and ultra-modern design details – these are all features buyers of Brad Lamb’s projects have become accustomed to.

If you are a unit owner at Glas and are thinking about selling, or if you are a buyer interested in the building, contact me here.

Combined with cleaning your condo, staging it for sale is probably the most important thing you can do to prepare your condo for sale. Staging is simply the process of making your condo appear as attractive as possible to as many potential buyers as possible.

Condos that are staged properly sell faster and for more money than those that are not.  I am always baffled when I walk into a condo and discover that it has not been prepped for sale, or worse, is filthy and cluttered. Sometimes I can even see the vendor’s money flying out the windows…

Some of my own personal tips for staging your condo for sale:

1. Understand your target market. Before you start making changes to your condo in preparation for sale, you should ask yourself a simple question, “Who is the most likely person to buy my condo?” You have to understand your target market and what they are looking for in a condo before you attempt to give it to them. It’s a very simple marketing concept that is lost on most agents when selling a condo.
2. Listen to advice. If your agent is experienced in selling condos downtown, they should know what it will take to get your condo looking it’s best. Sometimes it can be done without professional help, sometimes a staging company is required. But the principle here is you need be able to see your condo through the eyes of potential buyers, and this requires an unbiased, 3rd party perspective.
3. When in doubt, get rid of it. Removal is nine-tenths of staging. Expose as much counter top as possible, as much floor possible, as much storage space as possible, and if you can live without something for a few weeks, get rid of it before listing your condo!
4. Light it up. Proper lighting is crucial to a well-staged condo. It’s very difficult to have too much lighting. Have at least 2 sources of lighting in every room, and try to keep the lights on for when people enter your condo.
5. The 5 second rule. Your goal should be to capture buyers’ attention and make them love your condo within the first 5 seconds of them entering it. First impressions are the only thing buyers remember when viewing 10-20 condos.

If you are thinking of selling your condo and would like to hire me, drop me a line or give me a call today.