Selling the Rock

Hey Sudbury, it is getting COLD outside!

Hey Sudbury, hope you guys are feeling as stuffed as I am after a full weekend of Turkey and family last week. We are back in the routine with the family this week, all 3 boys are in hockey and keeping us super busy at the rink. After a long hiatus from the rink I put the old goalie skates on to help with my youngest Benjamin this last week. We spent the entire hour working on trying to have 3 year old kids get up on their skates by them selves, and we were somewhat successful. By the end of the hour there were fewer tears and I think I may have even seen a smile. This is one of the best feelings about being in a smaller community when the friends and neighbours all come out with their kids at the local rink, it brings back a familiar feeling, one that we missed out on last year. On the real estate front we saw an uptick in listings and a slow down in sales for the first time in a long while. I was predicting for the last few weeks that sales would spike as the winter market is around the corner but we weren't seeing it play out in the stats as we had initially predicted... Tune in for this week's crazy transactions and trends!

Hey Sudbury, Happy Thanksgiving weekend! We are wishing everyone a wonderful weekend filled with friends, family and food! As far as the Sudbury housing market...Tune in to find out this week's most shocking trends and transactions!

Hey Sudbury,

Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock - Your local real estate podcast!

With only a few more days left to vote, our goal is to provide educational resources to our clients, friends and family so that we all can make an educated decision with our vote.

Hey Sudbury! We are a few days away from the start of the school year. The thought of kids going back to in class learning is extremely exciting, especially in our house with the idea of all 3 kids going to school for the first time! At the same time we are inching our way towards another federal election, one with housing taking front and centre; with houses increasing like crazy since the last time we elected Trudeau into office, the nations debt increasing to all time highs, and people working from home; housing could be the number one issue on peoples minds going into this election. Tune in for this week's most shocking trends and transactions!

Happy Friday Sudbury & welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock, your local real estate podcast!

Hey Sudbury!

Hey Sudbury!

Hey Sudbury! Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock, your local real estate podcast!

Hey Sudbury!

Happy Friday and welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock, your local real estate podcast! The big news this week came from the Banks. First of all the earning reports were significantly ahead of where the projections were, with the top 3 banks earning profits in the last 90 days of 9.5 Billion (yup with a B). As much as COVID has wreaked havoc with our day to day lives and the government spending, the banks were prepared for far worse; the amount of money the banks set aside for dealing with 'bad debt' (people not being able to meet their lending) has been slashed by all the banks who have released their numbers. So far, CIBC actually reduced their ‘bad-debt’ allowance by 98%! And the last point of strength for the banks is the introduction of the Stress Test version 2.0 that will be going into effect June 1st, basically making buyers qualify at the minimum qualifying rate (currently 5.25%) or their rate + 2%. I’ve been told anecdotally, that this should reduce home shoppers buying power by approximately 4%; which is pretty negligible in the big picture. Tune in and listen to this week's 5 biggest takeaways from Sudbury's real estate market activity!

Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock, your local real estate podcast!

Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock, your local real estate podcast!

From a local real estate perspective...wow, it was an active week for sales. Sales in the last 7 days have only been matched 5 times in the last year! Pending deals continue to rise and new listings dropped from last week. My 5 takeaways this week are:

Code Grey…Code Grey! Wow, it's been another roller-coaster week, especially in my home and work life. I talked about it in last week's update how we had a scare in my son's class and had to shift to working from home for the week until we had our test results back, pivoting and relying on my team to an unbelievable amount. Well, I had freedom for a total of 4 days until we got a second call from the principal, telling us that my middle son had a case in his class. It felt like groundhog day; I feel like a pro now when it comes to pivoting and shifting up my entire operations of our business. In addition to that, I know those 7 digits on the back of my health card by-heart after logging in every 15 minutes until I got my negative results again this week. Only one day into freedom and we saw the local numbers go north of 50+, leading to the code grey announcement. Despite my negative test results, we are shifting our operations back to work-from-home. All while we celebrated the 1 year anniversary of the chaos in our lives. On the financial end of things, interest rates continue to pop, we early-renewed one of our rental property mortgages this week; even with the rate almost 1% higher than what I signed on our principal home just 2 weeks ago. As I’ve mentioned many times in the last updates, the writing is on the wall that rates will only be going up in the near future, not a bad time to lock in over the long term (note that when I talk about increased rates; I’m talking a difference between 1.5% and sub-3% still; which is an incredibly amazing rate for borrowing still). From a local real estate perspective, it was almost like the spring market is here already! We had an unbelievable amount of sales, but even more listings. It feels like the shift is here where we are going away from listings being sold in mere hours to listings being sold in days. Want the full scoop on Sudbury's real estate market last week? Tune in!

What a week Sudbury! Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock! This week is a reverse of last week's high sales and low listings. We had new listings skyrocket and sales fall back to normal levels for the winter market. Was last week just an anomaly? Ultimately, a healthy spring market will have an increase of supply and increase in demand, we’ll have to monitor how these numbers continue to shape up as the snow starts to melt. It was the % of deals that were in multiple offers that were in crazy territory again this week. We had more than 8 of every 10 sales happen in a bidding war, only one other time in the last year have we seen numbers close to this percentage. Interestingly, we had fewer sales, more listings and more multiple offers all in the same week. It seems like the % of multiple offers is probably a lagging indicator of the overall market and how things are performing on a weekly basis. The sale that had every real estate agent talking this week was the executive bungalow with a pool in New Sudbury. Listed at 900k, it was premium priced to begin with and featured a fire orange sports car with a 6-figure price tag in the garage with specific notes to the agents showing the property “DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE TOUCH THE CAR”). Only 2 days after the house hit the market it sold firm; at 327k above the asking price. That's almost equivalent to the average price of a house in Sudbury OVER THE ASKING PRICE! The only conclusion I can make is that the owners fell in love with the house and the car and made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. The entire market saw a pretty significant increase in homes this week. For the last few months we have been hovering just above the 100 available homes number, and this week we bumped that up to 123. This is the most homes available so far in 2021. It makes sense that we will see an uptick of new homes come available as we get closer to the spring market, but seeing the increase this week is a very big positive sign that there may be some normalcy coming in this chaotic market. I am hoping that Sudbury can avoid going back into the ‘Red Zone’ this week. Just for my own sanity... it has been so nice over the last 24 hours to be out of my house and back at my office. I understand we need to be safe and take precautions but with more people getting poked with the Vax in Sudbury it seems like we are getting closer to the end instead of getting closer to another mass shut-down. From a real estate perspective, we saw listings slow significantly when people got the stay home order. I have a feeling that will happen again if we are put in another shutdown, and the momentum of listings building up that we saw this week will be erased, bringing us even more chaos as we inch closer to the spring market. Wow-what a week, it looks like it's supposed to be a beautiful weekend out there; regardless of what zone we find ourselves in later on today, I hope you can get outside with your family and enjoy some beautiful sunshine.

Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock, your Sudbury real estate podcast!

Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock, YOUR Sudbury real estate podcast!

Is it just me or does the last week feel like we are living in the extreme arctic up here in Sudbury!

Full steam ahead… Sales are up 20% this week over last and listings down. The market feels like someone is putting gasoline on a forest fire. Even in the crazy market, supply gets smaller and demand continues to increase meaning if you're a buyer; things are going to continue to get worse before they get better. Only 8 of the 41 sales this week sold UNDER the asking price. Yep, you read that right, all the other sales were over asking price, and not just over asking, we saw some huge $ over listing price this week. 80% of the deals were bidding wars this week, which is just beyond crazy. It’s the highest % we have seen since I’ve tracked the number almost a year ago. We keep thinking that the number of listings is so low that it can only go higher… Well, that’s not happening... at least for the moment. We are down almost another 6% of total listings available in the market this week. I did the math when I took out the new construction from these numbers (which a few of them sold this week, more on that later); and we are still down to 70 total listings in all of Sudbury. Speaking of new construction - You may remember my take away from a few weeks ago, where I showed some frustration and shock at the MASSIVE increase in prices; yea those ones in Lively. One of the bungalows that was listed just one year ago at 529k and didn’t sell (it increased a few times from 530k, to 540k, then expired at 560k). Well, that one just hit the hot sheets sold firm this week, not just at the 630k new revised sale price but with whatever extras and finishes the buyers asked for it sold firm for 680k. Just a small 150k increase from the advertised price 12 months ago. It seems more times every week, I get more and more calls from Real Estate Agents driving up from Southern Ontario, calling me in front of a property telling me they have clients in their car and want to get into our listing. With Toronto buyers, come Toronto money and pushing our prices higher and higher. If the trend of buyers switching their home town from the ‘6’ to our local ‘Sudbury 5’; the number of new buyers who are entering the market will continue to increase pushing prices to the extreme. We are in a wild time in the market. There are 2 outcomes that I can foresee happening. Post-lockdown and the spring-market that is coming will boost listings, giving buyers a few more options and taking some wind from the sails of the crazy market. The second scenario being that Southern buyers continue to see Sudbury as our real estate is on a half-price sale; competing with the locals to find their next home, all the while increasing demand and pushing prices higher. Only time will tell if we choose the red pill or the blue.

This week saw the everyday trader rise up and ‘take the power back’ against the big corporate hedge funds. All starting in a public chat room on Reddit with the message boards describing the best way to rise up and save a dying video game company. The play to drive the stock price up was in retaliation to larger hedge funds placing massive bets on the stock going down; which would have happened if it wasn’t for the Reddit Keyboard warriors jumping in. What a week, it seems so 2020/2021 for the internet to rise up and put the screw to the hedge fund managers. It shows the power of an online mob. What jumps out to me is now more than ever is, buying stocks (specifically individual stocks) is truly gambling. Even if you invest with strong fundamentals, it may have nothing to do with the stock price. What does this have to do with real estate? I think it highlights the fact that even in a marketplace where house prices have skyrocketed, homes are a much safer investment. You can’t live in your stock portfolio but you do need a roof over your head. On a local level, things aren’t great. It seems like every day brings a new school with a COVID outbreak. In the last 7 days there were 72 new cases; 10 of which are active, 5 in schools, 3 in long-term care homes, and one in a retirement home. From a real estate perspective, we are seeing sales equal to what they were last week but the biggest shift was the decrease in conditional deals; there was a boost in sales this week by about 20%. Tune in for this week's 5 biggest takeaways on Sudbury's marketplace!

We are 2 weeks into the shutdown, and in a best case scenario, we are sitting with 3 weeks left. I find myself wondering what it was like to be able to go into a hardware store and pick out my own lumber or paint. With a lot of sellers delaying any thought of getting their home on the market until after the most recent shutdown, things are likely going to get worse for buyers in the market before they get better.

Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock - Your local real estate podcast! We are 2 weeks into 2021 and the wild ride that 2020 took us on seems to be continuing. The entire province is under a complete shut down (minus, Costco, Walmart, LCBO, Beer Store, Schools, etc…) but hey, I’m not complaining. In the province, we are seeing cases in the mid-3000’s per day, and the prediction is if we continue with the current rate of the spread in the next 4 weeks we could be seeing 10k cases a day! As I sit here in my office, masked up and a big bottle of sanitizer next to me; I feel alone, with all staff and agents working from their homes. I just hopped off a team zoom call and am having deja-vu of March of 2020 when COVID first began. From a real estate perspective, we are seeing listings and sales about equal this week but I feel that the numbers don’t do justice to what we are actually experiencing in the market... Tune in and have a listen to my 5 biggest takeaways on Sudbury's real estate market this week! Don't forget to like & subscribe! If today's episode stood out to you, let's chat! Send us a message on socials!

Happy Friday! Wow, here we are 2021! As we turn the page to a brand new year, it's been a crazy first 7 days, especially for our neighbours south of the border. With Trump being removed from office; and his loyalists storming the cabinet; needless to say, it was quite the week. Here on a local level, we have just recently extended our lockdown, the glimmer of hope is that schools announced that things will be going back to in-class learning for kids as of Monday. Wow, it's been a busy week trying to play parent/teacher to an SK and a grade 2 student who are sitting at an iPad all day long. From a real estate perspective, I know I’ve taken a few weeks off my weekly update but I hope you and your family had a relaxing holiday. We have started the year with more listings than sales (although there are 6 of the 21 listings that are re-lists of new construction homes), but multiple offers are still a thing that’s stayed strong into 2021! My 5 takeaways this week are: Numbers are down across the board, which isn’t surprising at all at this time of the year. What is surprising to me is the new listings that are popping up; we are seeing a lot of them holding off offers. This has been a thing that’s been the norm as we close out 2020, but moving into the new year I thought we would start to see less of that, but it doesn’t appear so. The number of listings is almost more than I expected for the first week of the year. I am in talks with a lot of sellers who are holding off until around mid-January to get their homes on the market; so to see over 20 listings for the first week of the year is encouraging to the buyers who have been waiting for listings. The tough part is a lot of these listings are still holding off offers, showing that the power still lies with the sellers. It looks like multiple offers have found their way to carry forward into 2021. Sure, there were only 5 last week, but 5 of 13 total sales is that consistent % that we have seen. Historically, we find that buyers find deals in the first few weeks of January but this year I think the deals will be few and far between. Buyers are still sitting around and ready to pounce on anything that is good value. I took a quick look at the first week of 2020 vs the first week of 2021 for # of sales, and sure there isn’t a big sample size but we are double what we were last year at this time. This just shows that the pent-up demand still is alive and well in the marketplace. Tristan and I made our 3 big bold predictions each as part of one of my favourite podcasts we filmed over the break; click this link here to read it for yourself. My predictions for 2021 were by the end of the year we could hit a 400k average price point, the condo market would gain traction in Sudbury and lastly that the generation following Millenials (Gen Z - age 8-23) will play a big role in shaping the future of Sudbury's Real Estate market. Take a listen to the podcast that we did and I think you will see my rationale as to why these buyers will be the next push to lead our real estate marketplace into 2030 and beyond! I hope you guys had the best holiday possible. I know it was different with family members restricted and virtual visits over zoom. For myself it was truly unbelievable, I felt relaxed calm and was able to take some time to enjoy the family time. Living on the lake, we were able to have the backyard rink set up; and it seems like every lake in Sudbury has a skating path set up with multiple rinks, it is truly amazing to see Sudburians enjoying the outdoors. Wishing you all the best in the coming year and we’ll chat next week!

Happy Monday and welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock - your local real estate podcast! If you listened to our last episode, 2020 RECAP Predictions and Prices, you knew today's episode was on queue! David Kurt and Tristan are on the mic to share their three BIG BOLD PREDICTIONS for 2021! What's going to happen in Sudbury's housing market this year? Tune in to find out what Lake City Realty is manifesting for 2021! We would love to know what your thoughts are on David and Tristan's big bold predictions for 2021! Your support is so important to us; like, share, write us a review or send us a PM with topics you'd love us to address over the next few episodes of Selling the Rock! If you're a fan of Selling the Rock, we invite you to follow along Lake City Realty's journey on Facebook and Instagram! We work hard to pool as much value into our content and digital platforms, whether it's educational, community building, the behind the scenes of our daily office life and of course updates on the latest Selling the Rock episodes!

As it's almost time to say goodbye to 2020, we welcome YOU back to the very last episode of Selling the Rock until the New Year! Tristan and Dave are excited about this one - it's time for the Annual Wrap Up! Last year, we sat down in December of 2019 and shared our 3 BIG BOLD PREDICTIONS for 2020...today we will be returning to these predictions to see if any of them panned out this year!

Happy holidays...and welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock! This episode is EXTRA special... It's our 2 year anniversary in the business! It took a lot longer than two years in thought and process to build what we've got here, but we've opened our doors for business just at the end of December in 2018! Reflecting back on the idea of a brokerage, what was important to me at the time was creating, establishing and growing something from scratch. The idea of building something that my kids could point to one day and say, "Look what Dad did"...the idea of legacy played a huge role in the behind the scenes of what I've done. 2019 was an okay year. Our sales were basically flat year over year. We had some highs...and some lows. I remember reflecting on why our team hadn't grown in size and why our sales were the same year over year. Lake City Realty wasn't growing the way I had imagined. I thought that if I built something, people would just start approaching me saying, "Dave, I'm interested in joining your brokerage." Clearly that wasn't happening. As we rounded out 2019, we really dove into creating content. This podcast, Selling the Rock really fired away! Shortly into 2020, we found ourselves in a big global pandemic. Everything was closing around us, leaving me with the uncertainty of how we would continue to function, grow and survive. I still remember wondering if I'd be able to sell another home in 2020. The government just announced another round of Province wide shut down...sure it's going to be a little bit less in the North, but it's another two week's where nothing can go on. Rounding into 2021...we have some interesting times ahead. 2020 was also a great year for our business - we grew in sales at about 5% and we did about 165 deals this year...which is fantastic! That's an increase of almost 10% year over year. We doubled the size of our team! The idea that if I built something, 'they' would come turned into more than an idea! Lake City Realty started with myself, Mike, Tristan and my Dad! This year we've had Kelly - my sister, Jennifer Brouillette and Chad Moore join our family! The Content...we had done some content and started this podcast in November of last year, but the contents been on fire this year! One of my goals was to hire someone focused on content development and a media expert and we were able to find the perfect fit! Circling back, we wanted to build a real estate brand for the future - we know that consumers are looking for something different in 2030. We don't want to be the Kodaks of the world...I read the other day that Kodak developed the first digital camera 25 years before anybody else had developed one but they didn't put it out in the world because they didn't want to cannibalize their traditional sales. I think with me, I always want to push the boundaries and build the business that's going to succeed in 5, 10, 15, 25 years from now. So that's a little bit of a summary of what's gone on behind the scenes in 2020. We survived a global pandemic - so far. I can't be more blessed for the team I have around me! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to my podcast and for the continued support from the community and from family and friends! Til' Next Time!

Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock! We've got David Kurt and Chad Moore on the mic today to chat about the week! From a real estate perspective listings stayed pretty consistent week over week with last week, as we find ourselves in this pre-christmas lul; and sales actually stayed pretty strong outpacing new listings again this week by close to a third. The listings and sales were about consistent with last week. We had chatted with getting to a point where we would hit the lul as we head into the Holidays and it appears this could be the numbers we are seeing hold as the slow market. If this does hold true, it could be a pretty strong holiday season. Compared to the the activity last year at this time we actually saw 28 sales during this same week 2019; which means we are busier than last years market as well. The most surpising number this week is the number of active/pending sales. We saw a huge drop last week when we hit just 6 total deals that were pending and this week we launch that number back up to 20. This is a good sign for # of sales as we head into next week. One of the reasons we’ve pointed to the market continuing to be strong is the nicer weather, and despite headed to a snow storm apparently for Saturday; buyers are still seeming to be pounding the pavement looking for that perfect place before Christmas! The number of multiple offers stayed really consistent this week again with closer to 50% of the sales being close to asking or above asking price. This has continued for the last few weeks, and it is interesting to think that even with the winter market upon us that their are homes that buyers are willing to get into a bidding frenzy over. The other interesting part of this is the value the sellers are putting on ‘cash’ offers. David was on a zoom meeting with some Realtors® this week and they were discussing the entry level market in Sudbury and the comment was made that soon enough there will be no listings under 300k; especially within the city. As he was preparing to show a buyer this weekend he saw this exact scenario playing out. Typically the discussion goes like this, “we want a house that doesn’t need too much work, we are ok doing cosmetics and we’d prefer to be in town, and no we won’t do a semi-detached”. There are a few listings that are priced just under the 300k but these prices are artificial with the likelihood that they will sell for a good chunk over the 300k price point. We're having the conversations with people multiple times a day it appears; questioning if this winter dip is the start of a market cool down in general or will prices continue to go up. We don’t have the crystal ball and can’t predict the future. The biggest reasons for prices to continue to be stronger and quite a bit stronger next year are; it doesn’t appear that the supply will massively increase any time soon, rates will be remaining low for the foreseeable future which makes lending cheap, our properties may seem expensive to those who bought 5 or 10 years ago but to those people in Southern Ontario who are looking at coming north to enjoy this work-from-home shift we’ve become accustomed to it looks like our homes are on sale. The reasons that the market may have peaked include; the fact the government has artificially put rates as low as they can get them, they can’t go lower (house prices are typically inversely tied to lending rates), sure there are some buyers coming up from down south, but most of the buyers who wanted to escape their COVID-condos did so at the start of the pandemic, and people who have been financially hurt by COVID have been able to coast with CERB and deferring mortgages, 2021 will be the first time the government may not be there to stop the bleed. Tune in for the whole week speel and let us know what your thoughts are! Til Next Week!

Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock - Your local real estate podcast! From a local perspective, it was a winning week for 2 nurses who hit the jackpot last week in HSN’s 50/50 draw. The draw hit the biggest prize yet of over $200k. These two young nurses bought a few tickets to celebrate a recent promotion. This should make for a Merry Christmas for their families for sure! On another note, the City is opening up public skating which I know me and my family are excited to get out for. As a COVID-twist, you have to book your session on the rink (which can be done at this link here). I’m excited to build an outdoor rink on the lake again this year for the kids but this should fill the gap until the ice is safe to get that started. From a real estate perspective, listings continued at extreme lows for the week, which is reasonable given Christmas is around the corner. While sales dropped from last week they still outpaced new listings by quite a bit. Want the insider scoop on this week's 5 biggest takeaways as we enter the December market? TUNE IN!

Happy Friday and welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock, your local real estate podcast! Today we have David Kurt and Chad Moore on the mic to chat about this week's 5 biggest takeaways! The drop off of listings and sales is so predictable for this time of the year. But wow… Just wow… In just one week we went from 43 new listings which was already near the weekly lows for all of 2020; and this week we only were able to manage 27 new homes that became available. This is 1/3rd the number of a busy week in the summer (and even during these busy weeks the buyers were complaining about the lack of available homes). With the drop in listings; the interesting thing is that sales stayed consistent. This week we saw 43 sales with the weekly average being 44, so right on par with what we would expect. Sales nearly doubled the new listings this week! This is a leading indicator that available selection for buyers will continue to dry up; and if this trend continues, buyers will not appreciate the availability of homes continuing to decrease. The multiple offers this week are pretty surprising as well. With almost 60% of the deals happening in multiple offers it feels like the active market may never end. My overall feeling for the last few months is that there are not as many first time buyers that are starting to look for homes in our marketplace. In addition to that, the number of buyers who are escaping Southern Ontario seem to have slowed down; especially for those looking for a principal ‘work-from home’ place. We have seen a strong amount of out of town investor buyers who are targeting Sudbury; but we are seeing strength in the Single Family housing market in addition to the multi-family marketplace. Speaking of the multi-family marketplace; wow, things have been on fire with investment properties lately. This is where we have seen a lot of out of town buyers coming in droves to look at Sudbury as a viable option; compared to the prices they are seeing in Ottawa and the Golden Horseshoe markets down South. Price per units and capitalization rates, two criteria investors use to evaluate properties seem expensive to local investors; compared to what you could get a year ago, but compared to other marketplaces, Sudbury looks like it's on sale. For the last few months we've made the prediction that the market was slowing; thinking that as we head into the winter market, the buyers would choose to put their search on hold while those sellers that felt motivated would be forced to list and keep their home on the market in the holiday season. This has been partially true; the drop in listings reflects motivated sellers who will list, while others are holding off until after the holidays or the spring market. The anomaly thats hard to wrap our heads around is the number of sales that continues to be so strong. If these numbers continue, it almost feels like we are headed to a further price increase; something I didn't think we were going to see until mid-way through next year. As we count down the days to Christmas, it is clear that this holiday will be one unlike any in recent memory. The family around the table will be much smaller in numbers, but ideally that’s what’s going to be required to get back to some version of normal in 2021. I remember almost a year ago at the on-set of the COVID shutdown projecting out how long this would last, thinking it was days or weeks and things would be back to normal. We are approaching a year, and there is a faint hope that 2021 may bring more optimism with a 3rd vaccine being discovered; but it still will remain some interesting times as we try to roll back to some version of the ‘olden days’ pre masks and social distancing. Stay safe!

Happy Friday everyone and welcome back to your weekly wrap up episode of Selling the Rock! Wow-what a change from last week, we saw an abundance of sales with hardly any new listings; and this week sales were around the same number but the number of new listings jumped a ton! We had expected the slow down in sales and new listings as we transition into the winter market, but this week was definitely one where there are more homes available to browse on realtor.ca. The conditional deals were up significantly week-over-week by almost 30%. This is the best snapshot in time with market activity; showing that the buyers are still out there and excited to jump at homes. As mentioned in past weeks, this could be the pre-winter rush that we expect from buyers but it could also just be a sign that the market continues to be strong. The most surprising number this week… The % of multiple offers. We went back to 3 out of 4 deals seeing multiple offers this week. That's matching a peak we saw only at the busiest time in the marketplace. There were a lot of deals getting done at a lower price point this week, and it makes sense that those price ranges are more active, but an interesting number to see for sure. Taking the last point a little further, I reviewed the $ figures on the deals this week. Only 2 deals were over a 500k price point (and in both cases just barely over). It is interesting to see the slow down in the upper-end price homes. This points to a more active first-time buyer marketplace; which is interesting to consider. The big shortage in the marketplace; at least anecdotally, is the turnkey step-up family homes. Looking at the statistics there is actually more listings available now then there was last week (more new listings than sales again this week; albeit slightly compared to last week), but I currently am seeing it with my buyers and chatting with other agents in the office that are seeing the same thing. It's the lack of move-in-ready; with upper end finished homes that are on the market. What has to happen for these homes to come up? The sellers living in them have to be motivated to jump up to the next level of a luxury home or be living in a fully renovated home and be ready to downsize (usually people at this point are in a house that needs updating). I think that these types of homes will continue to see strong prices as the buyers who are looking to buy these are sitting on the sidelines waiting. It is a bit scary to read the news on the number of cases of COVID this week. It’s in the news that the current projections could hit 6500 cases a day by Christmas if we continue on the same trend lines that we are currently on. It seems like deja-vu when we realize it was almost this time last year when we were first hearing about COVID and this mystery disease. I know a lot of friends with small businesses would be in a tough place if we did have the world close down around them again. With this said, I hope everyone is staying safe and sound, and continue to do whatever we can to manage the spread. Until next week guys!

What a week it’s been. From a COVID standpoint, numbers keep rising; which is to be expected after the family gatherings over Thanksgiving weekend (as much as we tried to keep the gatherings to a minimum). I was told that today sparked the first instance of COVID showing up in the high schools with a positive test at Lo-Ellen. As I type this out I am trying to keep my fingers and toes crossed that this doesn’t escalate to what we are seeing in Southern Ontario; and that kids can stay at school which can keep our local economy moving forward. From a real estate perspective, we saw a reverse in the trend we were becoming accustomed to in past weeks with more sales than new listings for the first time in a few weeks. The other biggest takeaway is the # of multiple offers was down significantly week over week and as a % it was off a cliff. Tune in and listen to David's 5 biggest takeaways on last week's Sudbury real estate market activity! HUGE thank you to everyone who came out to Kivi Park on Saturday! What a fun day of spooktacular activities and costumes! Don't forget to post a photo of your carved your pumpkins on social media! If you tag @kivipark and @lakecityrealtyltd - you will be entered into a draw and could win some SUPER AWESOME PRIZES! The winner will be announced on Halloween!! Til' Next week!

Hey Sudbury! Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock! Today we have both David and Tristan on the mic to give you your weekly market wrap up! From a real estate perspective, we continue the trend of more listings than sales that we’ve seen in the last few weeks (good news for buyers); in addition to that, the stats across the board were down week-over-week compared to the last few weeks and well below the post-covid averages. My 5 takeaways this week are: The slowdown continues in the marketplace this week. For the 4th week in a row, we’ve seen more listings hit the market than were sold; which continues to increase the selection for potential buyers. As a buyer in the recent marketplace; they have come accustomed to sellers ‘holding off offers’ and dealing with a bidding war/multiple offer frenzy come the seller's selected offer date. While multiple offers are still continuing (61% of sales this week were in a bidding war); it seems listing agents are getting more desperate for offers to come to the table on their offer date. Multiple times this week, I showed places that held off offers and the listing agent was calling me on offer date letting me know they have no offers and sellers would love to have one to work with. Numbers are down across the board this week, in all 3 major categories (New Listings, Sales and Conditional Deals). I’ve chatted about this in past weekly updates but the idea that ‘Winter-is-Coming’ is clearly having the seasonality impact that reduces activity in our local market every year. Sellers signing a 3-month listing now (and the scary thought of signing a 6-month listing for those agents that push that) bring us through Christmas and into 2021! The countdown is on now where we have 5-6 weeks left in this market until we are dealing with showings in the freezing temperatures and snowstorms. There are currently 10 waterfront homes available in Sudbury’s waterfront Hot-Spot (Southend/Long Lake road area). I reviewed the list prices and 50% of them are priced in the Ultra-Luxury Price Point, starting at 1.5M and going all the way to just under 5M! The other 5 that are on the ‘affordable scale’ include a fixer-upper around the 400k mark, and then jumping to the 700k-ish type of value. There is clearly a grand-divide between average house prices and waterfront home prices in this market; and this seems like something that isn’t going to go away any time soon, this gap in prices will more than likely just continue to increase. We are currently sitting at 274 active listings in the City of Greater Sudbury. And typically, as we transition from the Summer to Winter market we will see a decrease in the available listings by about 25% (leaving roughly 75% of the number of listings over the winter months). If this trend continues we could easily see our total listings in the range of 200 or so listings available on the market. This would be extreme lows for the Sudbury marketplace, which may mean that the winter market may actually be stronger than we have seen in past years. There are a lot of unknowns as we prepare for the first COVID-winter market, but it's clear that the rest of the province's real estate market continues massive growth year-over-year, and it almost feels like Sudbury numbers are coming up short versus a lot of our Southern Ontario marketplaces. We are typically a few years behind the trends we are seeing in S.Ont. and if the strong price growth continues there, we could be headed towards a strong long-term picture for our local market! All the best and we’ll check in with you next week!

It was an interesting last 7 days we’ve had! COVID numbers continue to climb in Ontario (to a smaller extent in Sudbury as well); which has led to Ford requesting immediate family only around the Thanksgiving table this year. I have a feeling there may be an abundance of XL Turkeys at the grocery stores this year. From a real estate perspective, we continue the trend of more listings than sales that we've seen in the last few weeks (good news for buyers)! Week-to-week activity is staying pretty consistent with conditional deals being exactly average for the week as well. New listings continue to surpass the weekly sales! This is adding more product to the market and should be putting less stress on buyers. The interesting thing is that a lot of buyers are feeling that they may be running out of time to purchase something before the winter is here. This is pushing them to buy now before they are forced to move in a snow storm. The frustration of listing agents not pricing places correctly was back this week, not with the volume that we have seen in past weeks. The most interesting example of it this week was a big New Sudbury home that felt like a rustic log home complete from Manitoulin Island. It was a large place with an in-ground pool in the backyard to complete the package. This place was listed under 400k and sold for a whopping 115k over list price! Market activity continues at a constant pace. When watching the trends of conditional deals every week, we see that the number of transactions has stayed very consistent with our weekly snapshot showing 22 pending deals for multiple weeks in a row. We did see these top out at the high 20’s (even reaching 33 deals one week back in July), but the pre-winter market continues to be chugging along at a standard pace. This week we saw an interesting example where they held off offers on a property in Lively. There was a bit of a fixer-upper property price just above 300k in a good area of Mikkola, and I actually thought it was underpriced slightly. They were holding off offers for a few days and ultimately didn’t even get their full price. The interesting part is that there was a similar house that was listed at the same time with an offer date a few days later that is on the other side of the highway (upper lively) but more updated; I believe that a lot of the same buyers would be looking at both of these properties. I think what happened is most buyers are leaning towards the more renovated home and because that offer date hasn’t happened yet, they passed up the better location place (that needed more work) with the thought of entering a bidding war on the other property. This is an interesting example of holding off offers. You have to be aware of your competition and when offers are due. I honestly believe that if the Mikkola property would have had an offer date after the more renovated house; they would have had more interest from the people who missed out on the Upper Lively home. Looking at the numbers this week, it really feels like the slowdown is coming. It is funny these listings are coming up now with only a few months until our winter market is here and some of the buyers icing their home search until the spring thaw. This combined with the mortgage deferrals ending for the 20% of Canadians who opted to put their mortgages on hold; there are lots of factors that could point to the shift in listings continuing. This may feel like the most interesting thanksgiving weekend that I can remember. Going back to only being surrounded by our immediate family bubble, and any others being present over zoom. I saw someone comment on Facebook that the steps we take now at Thanksgiving will go a long way to enabling us to gather together at Christmas!

Welcome to fall in Sudbury. This week we have David Kurt AND Tristan Ritchie on the mic to chat about the week in today's episode of Selling the Rock! The leaves are changing, school is in full swing (for now), and the furnace is officially turned on. I’m sitting here writing this cozied up to a warm fire with a piping hot americano (pretending its Pumpkin Spiced). Provincially, we are now down to gatherings of 5 people max, and the rumour is that today's PD day for educators has a focus on what would a shift to online schooling online look like as a transition. It was an interesting week with the US debate in full swing. The consensus after the first debate is the biggest loser is the viewers at home. Apparently, it had the search “Move to Canada’ spike to all-time highs on Google. Locally, we saw a nasty side of some keyboard-warriors who were threatening to deface the newest Mural painted by the BLM Sudbury chapter; 2020 has us living in a strange world I feel like. From a real estate market perspective, we are seeing the biggest one week shift away from the crazy seller's market. We had 20 more new listings than sales this week! Comparing to the averages, multiple offers and conditional deals were pretty consistent. My 5 takeaways this week are: The shift is real; we saw only 50 sales this week with 70 new listings. That's the biggest spread of new listings we have seen in all of 2020 so far. Good news for buyers who have been frustrated waiting for listings! Why can’t listing agents list a house at the right price??? This has been a dragging frustration for a lot of buyers in the marketplace and we saw it again a few different instances this week. The worst example was a vintage 1970’s bungalow listed in New Sud’s for 199k; I pulled up single-family homes under 250k in New Sudbury in the last 3 months and there is only one sale (244k) and that was rough! Clearly, this home should have been listed at least at 250k. What happened in the end? 25 total offers with 24 frustrated buyers, and almost 100k above asking price with no conditions. Reviewing the sales from this week, I took a look at the prices and almost 40 of the 50 sales were under 400k and 56 of the 70 new listings are also under 400k. Looking at ‘Luxury Sales’ (sales higher than 600k); there were only 5 this week (4 of which were in the South End). The highest one was just over the 900k mark for a flat lot waterfront home on Long Lake that also has a pool (for those who can’t stand the chilly Lake Water). Looking at the numbers this week, it really feels like the slowdown is coming. It is funny these listings are coming up now with only a few months until our winter market is here and some of the buyers icing their home search until the spring thaw. This combined with the mortgage deferrals ending for the 20% of Canadians who opted to put their mortgages on hold; there are lots of factors that could point to the shift in listings continuing. In the last few weeks, I had relaxed my prediction that the market would slow down and shift away from the seller's market we have been in. There are clearly leading indicators that could amount to a shifting market though; the biggest being that those mortgage payments for the 20% of Canadians that haven’t made a payment in 6 months will be due this week. That combined with snow in the forecast this week, may be a reason for us to transition into a winter market without really having a fall market at all. I know on tap for me this week will be braving the cold water to get the floating dock and the boat out of the lake, I’ll make sure the sauna is stoked before taking that dip! Best of luck and we’ll chat next week!

Things picked up again over last week's 'very average week' (almost mirroring our average stats post-COVID). We had more sales, more accepted offers and way more multiple offers...oh and fewer listings. It appears the market slow down may have things getting worse for buyers before it gets better. With sales and accepted offers both above the averages, and both up over last week, all while new listings are falling. This is putting more pressure on the # of listings available and the overall market selection (bad news for buyers). Multiple offers were again off-the-chart this week, and looking at the sale values behind the numbers, WOW there were some big prices above asking. I feel as though when I saw the market starting to slow, the rest of the province didn’t experience the same (unless you were a condo-owner in DT Toronto); and the media has been trumpeting the fact that the housing market continues to go crazy. This may have put some fuel on the fire locally and encouraged buyers to continue with the strong offers. We are seeing a push back to a pattern of agents under-pricing homes which is very frustrating for buyers. Buyers see a listing that may be priced in their range and get very excited about it (especially when it shows so much better than anything else in the price range). This is a friendly reminder to have the chat with your Realtor about listing prices versus what we think is market value. The conversation I like to have with a lot of my buyers is what would I have listed the house at if I would have taken the listing. We have seen a 50K+ price difference this week in the list to sale prices, and this type of situation can be extremely frustrating for buyers. Just because we as agents think it's worth a certain amount doesn't mean that we will talk you out of seeing it or putting an offer for what you feel the value is; as we don’t have a crystal ball. Ultimately we are here to provide advice and guidance and the buyer is in the driver's seat to make offers they feel comfortable with. We have had a few agents in our office chat about getting into multiple offers on fixer-upper properties. The comment I made to them is that this is typically when we see the contractors looking for their winter projects; it may be different this year but it seems like the contractors who are working are busier than ever, they will no doubt be a number of them looking for a winter project to keep their crew busy during any downtime; especially when we add to that the sales growth we’ve seen in the market over the last little bit. This will make it more frustrating for first-time buyers who are looking at the entry point to a lot of the marketplace. As I feel like the market does shift; getting busier for sellers (and power shifting away from buyers), it feels like the available homes that are coming out are actually giving buyers some options of great homes to pick from. This seems like good news for buyers, even though the stats don’t match what the overall feeling is in the market. Maybe this is a leading indicator of the market and will be a sign that things will slow down in the future. For now, I hope you are staying safe and enjoying the fall weather before the leaves are gone and the snow and shovelling get started!

When I ran this week's stats I compared them to the average stats we have seen post-COVID and surprisingly the stats are coming back EXTREMELY average. I keep talking about a slowing market, and clearly the real estate market (especially in Sudbury) has seasonality to it; but perhaps when I feel like the market is cooling, it's compared to the extremes we saw with the sharp increases as people were able to get out of their houses after COVID and start their search. When I compare to the average stats, we just may be in the new normal world with regards to market activity. If we are in the average territory this is a good sign! It's not like there is going to be a huge decrease in listings or prices. Clearly, there will be some seasonality and things will slow down as we approach the winter and pick back up when we get to the summer; but all-in-all we are in a steady marketplace. I also took a look at the total listings on the market today (not just new listings hitting the market) and there are 238 available homes. If we assume that no new homes came on the market and we continued to have 58 sales a week; we would run out of inventory in just over 4 weeks. This is a stat that is commonly used to predict if we are in a seller's market, a buyers market or a balanced market. A seller's market is defined with anything less than 4 months of inventory, a balanced market is 4-6 months of inventory and a buyers market is 6 months +. Clearly, with only a month and a half, we are still in a strong seller's market. I’m working with a buyer right now that is looking for homes between 320k and 420k, basically anywhere in Sudbury. I figured this is in the heart of our market and there should be lots of options to show them. I was floored at how few homes that met a pretty standard search criterion (3+1 bedrooms min, prefer a bigger yard, some updates). It was like looking for a needle in a haystack! It seems like there are options out there but wow it can be difficult to find some places, and the price points seem to be creeping higher! I have so many clients asking for my advice on whether or not this is a reasonable market and if things will go down or continue to go up. I wish I had a crystal ball and was able to predict the future, but sadly I’m no expert in tarot cards. Despite that, I will give a few reasons for the market to continue to increase and some reasons it could decrease (this is what weighs on my mind constantly in this market). I do think we are seeing some homes that are selling above their true values, with buyers being swept up in a bidding frenzy and putting offers that are shocking in price. But despite the large growth we have seen in average prices (specifically over the last 20 months), I think a lot of that increase is just playing catch up to the previous few years where the price points in the market were flat. I think that Nationally, the economy will get worse before it gets better, and due to that, we may see a small pullback in some of the price points we have seen (especially with examples of some of the extreme bidding wars). But overall, we will weather the storm well in Sudbury and prices here will continue to be strong and even continue to grow (at a slower rate then we have seen in 2019/2020). Catch you all next week!

My wife mentioned to me on Monday of the long weekend that it was the unofficial end to the Summer (Labour Day), and it really hit home that the long nights and beach weather is slowing slipping away (that couple with a frigid boat ride with the family!) Tuesday brought back school for a lot of kids across Sudbury; and whether parents are opting for virtual or in-class version of school year 2020/21, wow, its a nice feeling to get back to some routine. It will be interesting to see what the routine continues to look like as the seasons continue to change. Will kids have hockey this year? Will there be trick-or-treaters in a few weeks from now? We’ll see how things shake out with the first few weeks of school and play it by ear. Activity definitely feels like it's following the weather, and cooling down this week. But when we start analyzing the sales; sure the number dropped but the competition that’s in the current market; WOW WOW WOW! Almost 70% of the deals this week were in multiple offers, that’s the highest percent we’ve seen in 2020! New listings are down big this week. We actually hit the lowest number of new listings that we’ve seen in the last 16 weeks! Again listings are typically seasonal and peak in the spring, and bottom out with the winter, but my prediction was that when school starts back up and we get routines going again we will see the listings come back from what has been a low last few weeks; that clearly wasn’t the case this week. This will be an important number to continue to monitor, and although listings equalled the number of firm deals this week, both numbers were a lot lower than anticipated. Sales definitely dropped this week, it was actually the same number as 2 weeks ago, but looking at it on a longer time horizon; its a sales number that we haven’t seen since the end of May! This is right in line with what I have been preaching that the market is calming down; but when I pair that with the number of multiple offers we reviewed in the last point, it seems that the slowing market is still extremely active from a competition standpoint. There may be fewer buyers out there but the lack of product still makes it very competitive. The new listings almost matched the # of sales again this week; a positive sign that things are evening out, but when we factor in conditional deals (pending sales) it does throw the balance out of whack. Pending sales are a good snapshot in time about how active the market is at any given time, and what we see with 27 pending sales is another very strong week of market activity. The market is funny right now; I think that's the best way of explaining it. The low price stuff seems to be going quickly and for the most part, and as much as I’ve been preaching the slow down in the market, things have kept chugging right along. There is also a widening gap with ‘luxury' house values seeming to continue to increase (this week we saw sales in the Valley at 775k, 690k, and 610k!) as “luxury” homes continue to hit higher price points. At the same time I say this, it feels like the market is a lot tougher and the prices homes may have seen (specifically in multiple offers) a month ago aren’t prices that sellers can expect today. I think when we evaluate listings as a whole; we realize that the lack of available homes and the motivation of every buyer is unique; this explains that some homes have the ability to sell for big premiums while others hit the market with little to no showings. I hope you enjoyed your labour day weekend and you are transitioning well into whatever routines you have!

I’ve talked about a slow down coming for the last few weeks, and we saw the numbers trend in that direction a couple of weeks ago, with numbers reversing in my last weekly update. This week we saw sales slow back down, although the conditional deals, as well as multiple offers, were still quite high. And the number of new listings were lower but strong considering families are putting their focus back to school as it's only a few days away. Sales are back down again this week; even lower (by one sale) than when the numbers fell off the cliff a few weeks ago. The sales that are still happening are happening in a competitive environment, with lots of multiple offers. Looking thru the sales, there are a lot of them happening at the entry-level market price points, and the ones that are happening in the 600’s + (there were a decent number of them); are homes that are truly impressive. Conditional sales were high again this week, surprisingly high to what I was expecting. These are typically a snapshot to show how active the market is at a given time; and with 27 active deals in the last week, it is more active than I thought it would be. Looking at the listings that have offers on them; only 2 were homes that were listed in the last 7 days, with the majority being a few weeks old. New listings hit a low we haven’t seen in a few months; although still larger than the # of firm sales. There is a noticeable slow down in showings and activity in general on a few of the listings that came out last week. There are a few explanations we may point to for the lower listings; families enjoying the last few weeks before school or a lot of people who were interested in selling may have got their house on the market earlier in the summer. Ultimately, for the market to continue to balance, we will need more listings to come out. My guess is the next pop in listings we will see will be after kids are back to school in September. I was surprised to see how many ‘luxury’ homes (premium-priced) sold this week. This can be different prices in different areas. Luxury in Chemmy may be at 600k, while luxury in Southend may be 800K. There were a number of bigger sales this week, and I was close with some of my buyers to getting involved with multiple offers on some of them. In the case of the ones that we came across, they offered something very unique that the market hadn’t seen in a long time; a really nice in-law suite for putting the parents downstairs and having built-in babysitters, or a beautiful pool backyard (the place on Jeanine I heard had 150k+ put into the landscaping). In all these cases, buyers were more than willing to pay for the WOW factor. Almost 80% of sales this week that happened were under 400k. Now that is still a lot of money for Sudbury homes, so its understandable that more than the average is happening at that price point. With interest rates in the gutter (and the way the Canadian economy is looking, it's not going to get better any time soon. My guess is 2 years out before we see interest rates creep up); 350k is a price range that a lot of first-time buyers are looking in. First-time buyers are a huge positive indication of a healthy real estate marketplace, so maybe we can take this as an overall positive, but it is interesting to note. With the nights cooling off and August running out of days, it truly does feel like the Summer of 2020 is coming to an end. However you have been enjoying your summer, I hope you continue to squeeze the last few ounces of joy out of it! Until next week!

It was a pretty active week for the Liberals. The previous Finance minister, Bill Morneau, quit or was told to quit all in the untangling of the ethical mess tied to the WE Charity. He forgot to pay back his travel tab of 50k, a small oversight for the finance minister, especially when his daughter is employed by the charity. In stepped a new Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, and although having almost no financial experience or business background; she seems to have some lofty plans. Everything I read seems to hint that Trudeau is pointed to introduce some version of Universal Basic Income. If we think we are in debt as a country now, we may just be getting started. In local news, kids will have a staggered start to school this fall. We have one new case of COVID (so far-so good Sudbury, good job keeping those numbers down), and we saw a display of the worst parent of the year encourage his daughter to beat up another kid. Wow, that was a busy week. On a real estate perspective, last week we hit what seemed to be a turning point shifting our market; we saw listings spike and sales slow to a crawl. # Sales: 64 # Conditional/Pending Deals: 20 # Multiple Offers: 34 # New Listings: 62 Despite the large number of Sales; there is a great number of them that are under 300k showing that the entry-level price point is still very active. I’ve made this prediction in the past a few times but this price range will be the last range to slow down. I was reviewing the conditional deals, and only a couple of them were listed in the last week. That is a huge shift we haven’t seen in the last few months. Typically, the new listings are the hot commodities and getting scooped up as soon as they hit the market. This is not the case this week. As much as every listing agent wants to hold off offers; we’ve seen presumptive offers (or Bully Offers as I prefer to call them) test the sellers and other buyer agents. It happened to one of my teammates this week. He was presented with a Bully offer; his client had not signed a form (in the real estate biz we call it 'form 244') that stated they would refuse to look at any offer that came in before their offer date. He presented the offer and the clients loved it and it sold firm on the spot. The tough part is the backlash he’s getting from other agents saying it wasn’t fair that they weren’t notified about the bully offer. The biggest piece of advice here is as a buyer, if you see a listing with a future offer date and you're interested, book your showing asap; even if it's not for a few days. When we notify ‘anyone who has shown interest in the property’ about Bully Offers, we use the list of showing requests as those to notify. Any agents who hadn’t reached out yet were out of the loop. A few deals this week, especially in higher price points went for a big chunk of $ under the listing price. This reinforces the point I’ve been making in the past few weeks that buyers in these price points are being super picky. They know what they want and they are in the driver's seat when they are shopping for it. We saw 2 listings this week sell for 1M + and if you add in one that sold at 980K, that brings the total to 3 (almost) Million dollar listings this week. There are only 6 sales over a Mil in the last year! I think what’s happening here is that buyers are seeing benefits from the increase in their equity in the crazy market and aren’t afraid to jump up in price if they feel like the value is there. As much as the market is cooling down, it's not crashing and prices are still remaining constant. There will be some tinkering with prices as we try to get a sense of what true values are when FOMO disappears from the marketplace, but all-in-all, I think we’ll continue to see steady growth in prices as we adjust to colder weather and turning the furnaces back on again. Til' Next Time!