Towards the end of the Summer, most people in real estate are either not super busy or are getting ready for the Fall season. Personally, I am in the boat of getting ready for the Fall. I’ve been writing and mentoring my clients about how important this upcoming Fall season will be as it will be a deciding force for two things:
1. The actual state of the real estate market; and
2 .The psychology of the buyers in the GTA
As I promised before, I will be giving you all an update from what I’ve been hearing and seeing right from the source. There are three things that stand out to me right now, leading me to believe that the “smart money investors” are getting ready for the real estate Fall season. In other words, they are “warming up” for the big sprint.
The Preparation of Monies
One of the great things about getting together with the Rock Star Real Estate Team is that we can get together to chat in-person about non-client related topics. More often than not, when you get a group of real estate investors and real estate professionals in the same room, the conversation topic tends to be about real estate (surprise, surprise!). Our good friend, Scott Dillingham (The top mortgage agent with CIBC), who has been servicing our clients, just told us that the ‘smart investors’ are getting their money ready. Many of our clients have refinanced their existing properties and/or activated their home equity line of credit (HELOC). In simple terms, this means that these investors have their wallets ready to go – money ready to be spent on new properties when they become available in the Fall.
The Delay of Builders
Our team is constantly in touch with developers to see when they are releasing many of the highly anticipated projects. To name a few, these projects are: Zen King West, Charisma, Museum FLTs 2, Canary Commons, and Wesley Tower. Many of these developers have delayed their launch or have scheduled their launch for late September. Despite new build homes and condos shattering records in the last few months with unprecedented demand, the psychology of the Toronto buyers is actually not very strong right now. I suspect they are hedging their bets that things will change in the Fall, which very well could mean that we may see the average price per square foot go up.
Buyer Leads
There has been an increasing number of buyer leads coming my way, much more than that of July and early August. As I speak with many of these potential clients, many of them are also gearing up and getting ready to invest as well.
I’m not expecting all hell to break loose with demand like we saw in the early part of 2017, but with three concrete factors pointing to buyers getting ready, I suspect there very much could be an influx of buying in the Fall. Not to mention, all past year seasonal statistics point to an increase in sales volumes during this time of the year.
Sitting on the sidelines? If this is you and you’re sitting on the sidelines, my recommendation is to disregard what you will be hearing about the stats for August that will be published next week. The stats will be that of record lows (as with all August months). Look and follow where the “smart money investors” are going. Also, keep in mind that TREB stats are always 1 month behind. You don’t want to be hearing about the market rebounding in September when they release the stats in October!
Until next time, Happy Real Estating!
Zhen
