If you are worried about real estate values dropping, you need to take a deep breath. Yes, the market is cooling off fairly dramatically. This is not is a sign of impending doom for homeowners. The real estate market goes up and down all the time.
You can look at short period of times and draw all the wrong conclusions. If you looked at just the last five years, you would think that real estate always appreciates at double digit rates on an annual basis. If you looked at the market in the late 1980s, you would swear real estate is the worst investment given the flailing market at that time. Of course, neither short term picture is correct.
The simple fact is real estate has historically been a good investment over time. Yes, we are heading into a cooling off period, but the market will come back. It may take a couple of years or it may take ten. It really does not matter because you will still be building equity in your home by making your mortgage payments. Once appreciation takes off again, you will be in very good shape indeed. If all else fails, you have a place to physically live!
As you can probably tell by now, my recommendation is that you do not sell solely because the market is cooling off. There may be other reasons you feel you need to sell, but do not do it just because appreciation is slowing down.
The only exception to the above advice has little to do with the real estate market and everything to do with mortgages. There are a lot of creative mortgage products on the market these days, to wit, zero interest and low initial payment balloon loans. If you have one of these, you need to evaluate whether you can ride out a dip in the value of your property.
Confusion is ramped in the Toronto real estate market and potential sellers are not getting all of the right information to make sound decisions. Due to the same reasons why home buyers should be buying a Toronto home right now you should be selling your home right now. It is time to expand your net worth and create some permanent wealth.
Toronto home owners are hesitant to sell because they don't think they will get all of their money out of the investment. For a lot of sellers this really shouldn't matter. Psychologically they don't want to lose money. In reality it isn't lost. It will just be transferred to a property or properties that will take advantage of the current market conditions.
Sellers can actually take advantage of the low interest rates, the buyers demand for good product, the lack of good product, and the current possibilities that exist to expand their net worth.
In a lot of cases I think a seller would be surprised at how well they can still do with selling today, even if they were taking the money and running. There has been a lot of media manipulation to have people think we in central core Toronto, are in a really bad market. It just isn't true. The average price for March transactions was $362,052 ? down less than five per cent from the same month last year, as reported by TREB.
The media has been manipulating the statistics to strengthen the story that they want to tell. They are using facts from certain areas in Canada that had big housing bubbles and making them look like they represent the whole country with big bold titles. I think that the media is doing this to increase their viewership stats so that they can simply sell more advertising space.
One benefit for someone wanting to list their Toronto home right now is the ability to leverage stagnant properties that have been on the market for a long time because the sellers aren't being realistic with their prices. By pricing your property appropriately you can make you listing look like much better value.
These same unrealistic sellers existed in the busier markets but they just weren't given much attention and they never should have listed the home for the price that they did in the first place. Now the media is using them to support their stories. I could ask $11,000,000 for my personal home but it would not sell for even 10% of that asking price. This doesn't mean that the market has come down 90%, it just means that I was very unreasonable with my initial price offering. These sellers exist in all markets but in better times they don't get paid any attention.
Pricing your Toronto home is certainly the key to selling for top value in this market, there are a lot of agents who have only worked in the hyperactive real estate market that we have seen over the past 10 years. They never learned to price when you don't have 10 offers to choose from. Try to tell a realtor that has 7 or 8 years of experience that they don't know what they are doing and need to go back to the basics. Their egos just won't accept that they need to change the way they work.
These Toronto real estate agents go on with their unfounded prices until the property becomes stigmatized and the evil "Price reduction" is necessary. Price reductions are extremely damaging because you need to make reductions in 10% increments in order to make them effective. Otherwise you just waste more days on market which is the key weapon for low ball offers. If aiming high and lowering the price over time is the strategy you want to use, you will end up selling for less than if you had made the initial price offering as close to reality as possible.
Sellers can take advantage and upgrade their home by selling now and buying something that is more expensive, something that would have been out of reach before. They can also take advantage by diversifying their holdings and buying an income property. Interest rates are at their lowest in decades so now is the time to expand your personal net worth.
Sellers can also take advantage of the surge in buyers and confusion among sellers by just listing. There is a lack of quality inventory on our market. Good homes are selling well, it doesn't have to be completely updated but buyers are more likely to buy something that is mostly finished than something that needs to be leveled.
I don't have a crystal ball but this is the situation as I see it right now.
Both Raynor James & Evan Sage are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Raynor James has sinced written about articles on various topics from Real Estate, Business and Finance and Debts Loans. Raynor James is with the site - FSBO America - .. Raynor James's top article generates over 90500 views. to your Favourites.
Evan Sage has sinced written about articles on various topics from Home Buyers Guide, Sell Home and Property Sale. Evan Sage is an award winning . Evan instills in his clients the confidence to make the right purchase or sale decision. He achieves this by demons. Evan Sage's top article generates over 4400 views. to your Favourites.