House prices overvalued by 14 per cent in Canada: CIBC

I agree with Ben Tal from CIBC about the market being overvalued (see here)


Already in some neighborhoods detached has fallen off 5%-10% since February and March (not so bad because it had a huge run up)


Condo Market

(Panorama, BSN, Maple Leaf Square, Luna, 550 Wellington) there is a huge shadow inventory and the Days on Market are creeping up.

Sellers are holding firm on their prices, but they are always the last to know when the market shifts. Buyers searching for are usually the first.


I don't see a crash, because I don't get a sense that there is real fear in the market (Canadians have a lot of equity in their homes and won't walk away) . Just a correction

10 Basics of a successful real estate investing

Went to the BILD Hi-Rise Forum on Condo Marketing and had lunch with one of our clients at Real Experts...and the topic came up, how does someone use sales and marketing techniques in Buying Real Estate.

Here are the top 10 tasks applied from sales and marketers that make real estate buyers successful.

1.Prospecting Daily
2 Strong, effective and efficient lead follow up on deals
3 Pre-qualify
4. Have a highly effective presentation of putting an offer
5. Looking at property regularly
6. Handling objections
7. Closing
8. Negotiating - convincing people why they should take your offer
9. Administration - coordination between lenders lawyers vendors and buyers
10. Managing your time

While I do realize social media is important...I'm not sure if its part of the top 10

Neurotic introverts live in Scarborough

For whatever reason, Scarborough has been the brunt of many jokes for those living in the GTA (it does have some good points...where else will you find a strip mall with a Dollar store, a Roti shop and a Chinese restaurant?....well I don't know you consider that good).

Now there may be official scientific evidence to the jokes. In the recent issue of the U of T Alumni Magazine Kevin Stolarick and his team at U of T’s Martin Prosperity Institute have been using data from online personality surveys to examine how cities are defined by their inhabitants.

According to his research, Scarborough has the highest percentage of Neurotic and introverted people in Toronto. No word if its something in Scarborough that makes people introverted and neurotic or that neurotic and introverted people are attracted to the area.

White Flight - Suburbs losing Young Whites to Cities

Interesting article from the Huffinton Post Suburbs Losing Young Whites To Cities, Brookings Institution Finds. For the first time "a majority of all racial and ethnic groups in large metro areas live outside the city. Suburban Asians and Hispanics already had topped 50 percent in 2000, and blacks joined them by 2008, rising from 43 percent in those eight years."

On the flip side, in the urban centres of cities, such as Washington and Atlanta, have seen the highest percentage increase of white residents since 2000.

It seems that there is a great shift in the mindset of American people who make money, where the stats show are white. They are demanding more quality of life living in areas with many things to do over spending time commuting.

Definite shift in demands, space vs time. What happened to this whole Penturbia movement Harry Dent was predicting?

Toronto Real Estate Stats

Browsing through the Toronto Real Estate Board Stats, Sales actually went up from March...who would of thought?

In April 10,898 Sales
in March 10,430 Sales

This is a marginal increase in sales.

Even the seasoned agents thought the market peaked in March and felt it was peaking? Why did they feel that? Because the amount of listings shot up from 18,684 (huge decrease from March 2009) in March to 22,951 in April (about the same as 2009).


Sales are still up, but it seems that with rates coming up and the strict mortgage rules the market should be dampened coming into the next quarter.