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 condo sold quickly and for top-dollar. In this video, I’m going to talk about the main selling rooms in your condo. More than the rest, these rooms will ‘sell’ your property!

This is one of several videos in my series about “How to Sell Your Condo and Buy a House“. Check out my Youtube Channel for the entire series.

1) ENTRANCE

Buyers will determine how they feel about your condo within seconds of entering. Having a front entrance that is welcoming and inviting is very important. Also consider how the other parts of your condo that you can see from your front entrance appear.

2) KITCHEN
It probably comes as no surprise that the kitchen is the number-one main selling room of your condo. Your kitchen is the room that buyers will gravitate to first and it’s very important to make sure your kitchen is showing in top-form. Here are a few tips for making your kitchen show its best:

First of all, make sure your kitchen sparkles like never before. Every surface, even the kitchen sink, should shine!
Second, de-clutter your counter tops. Removing as much as possible from your counter tops will give the impression of space and a large workspace.
Finally, add some colour to your kitchen with accessories like a fruit bowl or some fresh cut flowers.

3) BATHROOM
Your bathroom needs to look and feel spa-like. Of course it needs to be spotless just like your kitchen, and you want to keep all counter tops as clean an clutter-free as possible. Make sure there is no mold or mildew in the shower, close your toilet seat lid! Fold your towels neatly and use simple art work and accessories to make your bathrooms feel inviting and comfortable.

When you are preparing your condo for sale, you need to think about the entire unit, however, depending on your time and budget constraints, your main selling rooms need to get the most attention.

If you are thinking about selling your condo and buying a house this year, I’d love to help. For more information contact me.

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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’m going to give you my top-5 tips for staging your condo to help you achieve this goal.

1) CLEAN
The first and probably most important thing you can do when staging your condo for sale is to clean it-and clean it well! Your condo should be spotless from top to bottom when you are showing it to buyers. Even a tiny amount of dirt or mess can be a big turn off for potential buyers.

2) REMOVE
I like to say that 9/10ths of staging your condo is removal. There’s a big difference between how you present your condo to live-in versus how you present it to sell. Remove and de-clutter as much as possible to give your condo a crisp and clean feeling. And remember when in doubt, throw it out!

3) LIGHTING
If your condo doesn’t have enough light it can dramatically change how a buyer feels about your property, especially during evening showings or on overcast days. A good rule of thumb is to make sure every room in your condo has at least 2 different light sources, for example: an overhead light fixture and a table or floor lamp. Keep all the lights on and window coverings open when you are showing your condo to potential buyers.

4) DE-PERSONALIZE
It’s important to depersonalize your condo when you are selling it. You want to make potential buyers immediately feel like they could live in your condo. If you have a lot of personal photos and collectibles, put them away to help buyers feel at home right away. Also, it’s very important to neutralize any smoke, pet or cooking odours before you put your home on the market.

5) ROOM FUNCTIONS
Each room or area of your condo should have a clearly defined function. Use furniture, accessories, and lighting to define each area and to make it very obvious to potential buyers how they could use each space.

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. Check out all my other videos here or contact me for more information.

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Unless you live on the penthouse level of your condo, the roof of your building is probably something you have never thought about. HOWEVER, when selling your condo and buying a house, you need to know that the roof of your home is one of the MOST important parts of your house.

The two main types of roofs you’ll come across in houses in Toronto are flat roofs and pitched roofs.

Flat roofs are not actually flat, they always have a slight slope to them to allow drainage. They don’t tend to last as long as pitched roofs, however, they are generally cheaper to build. Of course everyone knows that flat roofs are great for roof-top patios and decks. A good flat roof should last at least 10 years

Pitched roofs come in many different styles and are typically very low maintenance and are designed to let rain and snow fall away from the house. A good pitched roof should last at least 20 years, but it can be much longer depending on the materials used.

So how do you know if your roof needs to be repaired or replaced? On a pitched roof, look for cracked or curled shingles. Look for holes and possible entry points for animals in any corners or crevasses. Look for fading or discolouration. The condition of a flat roof will be very difficult to assess without going up onto the roof.

My first expert tip for inspecting a roof is to not inspect the roof at all, rather, go inside the house and check the ceilings and walls for signs of possible water damage and leaks caused by a faulty roof.

My second expert tip is if you get a home inspection when buying a house, make sure your home inspector actually goes up on the roof. Many of them do not and only do a visual inspection which adds very little value to such an important purchase.

I wanted to show you the roof on this house near the Danforth as an example of a common problem many homes in Toronto have and that is uneven wear and tear. This roof is generally in pretty good condition however you can see that along the sides the shingles are badly damaged and in need of replacement. This is because of water run off from the dormer above. This problem can easily be avoided by adding a downspout to connect the upper and lower eaves.

If you are thinking about selling your condo and buying a house this year, I’d love to help. For more information contact me.

This video is a short introduction to my video series entitled “How to Sell Your Condo and Buy a House”. In this series I give tips and advice for Toronto condo owners who are making the move from a condo to a house. If you are thinking about selling your condo and buying a house this year, I created this video series just for you. Check back often for tips and advice and information you won’t find anywhere else.

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.

The reasons are quite simple:

1. Summer Vacation. Many buyers and their Realtors are not working in the summer and buying property gets pushed to the sidelines. Fewer buyers = less competition.
2. Leftovers. Many of the listings on the market in July are those listings that are ‘left over’ from the spring market of April, May, and June. The longer a property is on the market, the more likely the seller will come down from their list price (generally speaking).

Last summer was a GREAT buyers market. Right after the HST rush was over, July produced some memorable sales across the city that I still scratch my head at when doing market research for my clients and comparing current listings with past sales. Many people thought the sky was falling last year and many buyers who stuck around after June 30th got some amazing deals by today’s pricing standards.

While your friends are out sipping cold beers on a patio somewhere downtown, keep focused and make sure you have a vigilant Realtor working for you and you just may nab yourself a nice find this summer!  You’ll be glad you did when the fall comes and all your beer drinking friends are fighting for condos in bidding wars once again.

Thinking of buying a condo this summer? Let’s talk.

I’ve been working with one buyer downtown for the past few months. Let’s call him MJ. MJ owns a condo townhouse near Yonge and Eglinton that has appreciated significantly since he bought it and he’s looking to sell and move downtown. After seeing several units in different buildings and in different areas, MJ narrowed it down to 2-3 buildings he liked and was looking for a 2 bedroom unit up to around the mid $500s. Problem was, there was nothing available for sale. We waited. We waited some more. Nothing was coming up in these buildings. Frustration was starting to set in. Time to get creative.

Some agents will solicit listings by  flyering or directly sending letters to specific units in specific buildings. The message being, “I have a buyer who will buy your condo for top dollar!”. I suspect this approach is not very effective as it inherently reeks of ‘spam’ mail. I decided to take a different approach.

There just so happened to be a unit FOR LEASE in the exact building that MJ was very keen on, and this unit’s floor plan was one he had seen before and liked it. I called up the listing agent for this unit that was for lease and asked if the seller had any interest in selling instead of leasing it. He said unlikely since he just bought the unit last year. I let him know MJ was a serious buyer, and low and behold after a few phone calls back and forth, we submitted an offer in writing and that offer was accepted! MJ was thrilled that he found a great condo in a great building and he did not have to go through the pain of a bidding war to get it! He’s now getting his townhouse at Yonge and Eglinton ready for sale.

Thinking of buying or selling a condo this spring? I’d love to help you achieve your real estate goals. Contact me to discuss.

As with any other product or service, the best deals in real estate are often unadvertised. If you see a billboard or glossy ad in a magazine proclaiming the “suite of the month” or “special offers on now”, chances are there is no deal to be had here. You won’t find the best deals on a billboard or in a glossy magazine or taking up a page in the Globe and Mail. As with any other product or service of any value, the best deals in real estate are often the unadvertised ones.

This past weekend, some of my investor clients were able to take advantage of such an opportunity at a A1 condo project downtown. I received nothing more than a good old fashioned phone call from one of the developer’s sales reps informing me that if the developer sold a certain number of units in a certain period of time they would get a better rate on their construction loan. The developer was motivated and thus, offered significant CASH discounts off the list prices of their remaining inventory. Not a dime was spent on marketing or advertising this deal. The only people who heard about it were a handful of Realtors like myself who were called directly. My clients are very happy and the deal is now done. Prices are back up to the list prices.

My reputation and track record as one of the top Realtors downtown for pre-construction means my clients get access to these exclusive, unadvertised deals from time to time. To get on my list for these types of deals in the future, simply contact me and I will be happy to include you on future opportunities.

“One came by fax”

Sending an offer by fax in a multiple offer situation is the real estate equivalent of ‘mailing it in’. The agent is essentially saying, my clients’ offer is not strong enough to stand a chance of actually being the winning offer, so I’m not going to waste my time by actually showing up for the offer presentation.

At the precise time of bidding, make sure you find out a) how many offers there are on the property and, b) how many are being presented in person vs. by fax/email. If you hear some or all of your competing buyers are submitting their offers by fax, consider your own offer carefully before submitting! You don’t want to be the offer that makes the seller’s say “One offer came in and blew us all away!” (Side note: Sellers-NEVER say this in front of a buyer or buyer’s agent). For example, if there are 3 offers, and you are the only one who shows up in person to present your offer, there is a good chance the other two offers are going to be weak ones, so consider your offer price accordingly. An in-person buyer is a much more motivated and serious buyer than one who is not present (as a general rule).

When I hear an offer was faxed in, I will automatically discount that offer when advising my buyer-clients on an appropriate ‘winning’ offer price. This is more relevant when in an offer situation with 2-4 offers, but it becomes less relevant when there are 5+ offers.

Questions or comments? Please contact me.