PG993

The whole listing under FMV is the oldest tick in the book. I think it was invented by the Freemans realty here in the annex. maybe not! anyway. one day a few years back i was driving by a house on Huron street and saw their open house . I walked in and ask the selling price. the guy said 899K, I knew it was under listed so i went back to the car and came back with a cheque made for 899K. I asked the agent if i need to go to my bank and certify it. He obviously didn't bite but he got the point. It bugs the hell out of me when I hear "sold for 200K over asking....". it should be illegal to purposely list a property grossly under Fmv. Having said that some properties will truly sell considerably over asking for various reasons, but, come on, some of these agents are unbelievable.

user 723923490

Of course it is a strategy. You guys are missing the point. The market is on fire and China is driving it just like it did in Vancouver. As far as doing it yourself I have to ask if you have ever done a bidding war situation without an agent?
3/4 of the agents in Scarborough have never sold a house and barely speak English.
We owned this house with a few other partners one of which actually has a real estate license. We knew this one was going to be hell on wheels so we were happy to pay my friend Brad 5% to manage the whole affair. When the first offer fell apart yesterday morning we knew we made the right decision not to do it ourselves. Indeed Brad made us even more money on day 2. This is an agent who I have known for 35 years and done multiple buy and sell transactions with.

Turbodan

If you list it yourself, agents will not show it as they have nothing to gain. Unless Brad double ended it he only made 2.5 points. If you list a house at fmv it will not be seen nor sold for months. The only way to get offers nowadays is to list under value and have an offer day. buyers can also make bully offers too. yes the market is on fire.

Pags993

Hot areas also get the flyer drop, I have 2 neighbours that bought privately by dropping flyers. "Young professional couple looking to move into area, private sale, save all the commission BS etc" I get one a month at least for couples looking to buy privately and bypass agents.

It's becoming more and more common as well.

Imo000

He made you more money the 2nd day? He just got lucky that a second buyer was there at the right time. Could have just as easy went the other way. Real estate egent are leaches. Do they work significantly more for a $1M house than for a $500K one? I highly doubt it. Most houses for the better part of 15 years sell themselves. This entire realeste bussiness is a racket to steal a homeowner's hard earned money. They deseve an hourly pay and nothing more but since this has been done this way, people accept it.

user 723923490

Dude,
You are way too cynical. I watched and listened while he kept going back and forth between 3 parties pushing and getting higher bids with each call. Made us an extra 30k like that. If you work with the wrong accountant, lawyer, realtor, financial advisor etc. you will get screwed. Choose the right one and magic happens.

moab

there is no need for magic in this market. product sells itself. there are good real estate agents and **** ones. a good real estate agent would be able to sell a house in Scarberia in the 90's. Most wouldn't have been able to.

petee_c

There are some money rich and money smart people on this forum.

My question is how do normal 'young' people afford to live in toronto?

Normal young as in 40 or below, with jobs? Even good jobs like in health care, maybe an engineer with 5 yrs experience, professional tradesmen I can't see Toronto being anyway affordable.

Do they all commute in to the hospitals, office buildings in TO?

Isn't there a rule on how much of household income should go into housing? How can this keep up?

I'm semi rural with a house on a 1/2 acre lot. I'm seriously contemplating going part time in the next 12 months so I've been trying to tally up expenses... Good fortune and saving during the past 22 yrs of fulltime work has helped...

My monthly housing expenses are now.

~$400-450 property tax
~$100 insurance

If I bought a $1 million home and put 30% down, I'd still have a 700,000 mortgage. That's $17,000+ in interest for the 1st yr at 2.44% 5 yr fixed...

That's almost $1500/month in interest. How much is property tax on a small home in TO?

I dont know how kids do it these days. Our 1st principal residence was $165k in Stratford in early 2000, sold it after 5yrs for 230Kish. Maybe spent $10K to fix it up as it was a power of sale. Household income at the time was maybe 150K...

Current house was bought in 2005 for about 365K, hard to judge market value, but it would probably list around $650K now.... Household income hasn't changed a whole lot, maybe adjusted for inflation,.. But my wife has been part time for the past 13 yrs....

The biggest mortgage we had was probably 100K on our principal residence.... We're talking maybe $2500 interest per year....

Man, my kids are screwed.....




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BioBanker

Congratulations from Vancouver!

I gotta say it's nice to have China less in our sandbox than yours these days.

Getting a lot of dough for your house when you're selling is awesome but indiscriminate foreign buying creates problems over the longer term.

user 723923490

It is very tough for young people to buy anywhere now. When I was starting out it was not easy ether. My first house was a shack in the woods way out in the country. This is probably the way my kids will have to go or maybe the condo market to get started. Even rents in T.O. are super high so there is a good incentive to buy. Fixer uppers, marginal properties, there are options for those that don't mind things getting messy. As always, people with gumption will get ahead. Those looking for a hand out will get it but they wont get the house.

user 723923490

Agree. One of the things that drove the sale at this time is the possibility that ON will do something similar to Vancouver to limit Chinese buyers. This is my second transaction to a Chinese buyer.
The Govt. will have to do something, the distortion to our housing market is becoming extreme. I would hate to be a buyer in T.O. right now.
Cheers
Allan

BioBanker

The TO market will be fine, as will Vancouvers.

There may be big runs in any one year but unless you're buying at the worst time and right before the inevitable (and likely temporary) check back, and unless you need to sell in that period, my guess is that people wont lose money.

But yeah, starting out today must be tough. Wages have not increased to offset. I might not have been able to afford my first house (in Torontos Beach) today if I were starting out today with todays wages for the same job. And good luck to my kids trying to stay in Vancouver - which is way higher real estate than Toronto with little to no industry to pay for it!

altesporsche

I couldn't agree with you more, the market is insane and being young (35) living downtown and knowing what a lot of my friends roughly make, I really do not understand how 95% of them can own or buy a home. I just went through the process of buying the Condo my fiancée and I live in now and I have a few rental condos downtown, each of them I own were nearly impossible for me to buy being someone who works overseas and all requiring 30-40% down and thinking about just the one we recently moved into and gathering the funds for the down payment was difficult and I make a considerable amount more than most if not all of my friends in Toronto, but even with 20% or 10% down is nearly impossible for a lot of people to buy a home anywhere near downtown Toronto. Most condos a family can live in downtown are in the $750k+ range and houses or attached home in the $1 mill plus range and even if the income is say $150k how can they afford it ? the market is just absurd right now and people are drowning in debt if they can afford to buy a home or they are renting and 100% of that money is then someone else's investment, most likely a foreign owner. I almost bought a unit in Ice II tower on York, a corner unit and well it went for $80K over asking in the end and I wasn't prepared to go that much over because it truly wasn't worth it for that unit.. but the real estate agent that showed me the Condo got back to me a few days later to inform me the same overseas owners, own the same unit 5 floors above and 4 below (So ten friggen condos) and he could get me into one of them for $100k more than the one I bid on.. it makes me sick because a lot of this is games by the real estate agents like it was in Vancouver. I simply told him where to go and not call me again ill get another agent as he was a slimey sack of ****. Ill not buy another place in Toronto as my last two were just annoying to deal with.

Pags993

Certainly interesting times ahead for the housing market and affordability factor. Many of my younger friends simply assume 2.5% mortgage rates are here to stay so a $750K mortgage is affordable. Well kids nothing lasts forever and I often do the back of th envelope math for them at let's say 4% on that same amount and they begin to panic.

Our daughter is only 4 but we have already decided the place in the city will be hers and we will offer up an affordable mortgage to her so she can get a strong foot hold. We will be moving to the cottage full time so that works in our case. Who knows how it will all unfold in the years to come....

Christien

I too don't know what our kids will do when the time comes to buy. They're 10 and 8 right now, so at least another decade before they're looking to buy a home, and unless something really drastic happens to the housing market not just in Toronto but all of south-central Ontario, I can't see our kids being able to afford anything anywhere near here. We got incredibly lucky buying both our house and the first 911 back in 2004, before the markets for either took off. Our house is worth almost 3x what we paid for it (though we've also put over 100 in upgrades into it, including a pool) and I sold the 911 for 6x what I paid for it. Insane luck. We should've bought 3 of each