The London, Ontario Real Estate Podcast

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Originally published on January 9, 2023

Hey everyone, Phil Bailey here back for another episode of the London Ontario Real Estate Podcast. We are in 2023. Everyone I know, it's been a little while. The holidays got the better of me, but we are back and it is a new year. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and great start to 2023. We're in early January right now and I just wanted to jump on the podcast today and talk about all of the questions that I am currently getting from my clients. Number one coming up, and I'm gonna do a few today on the podcast, but number one going, coming up is what is currently happening in the market in London area. So if you look at the most recent stats from December of 2022, so just a few weeks ago that just wrapped up, the big story that I am talking to a lot of people about is this home sold number.

So there's only 299 homes sold according to the London and St. Thomas real estate board. That is really low folks. Typically in a typical year, there'd be significantly more homes sold. If you look at the, the average for the past little while, I'd say you're probably like half maybe even less than half over, over consistent basis over the last few months of the year. I think there was some that were even more, yeah, at least half and maybe even a little bit less than that. So what I'm noticing with that and from that stat, what I'm picturing is that there's a bit of a tug of war happening right now between sellers and buyers. Buyers are trying to get this incredible deal and sometimes it's not just them being aggressive, sometimes it's just what they can qualify for. Right now, interest rates have gone up.

So the concern with interest rates going up is that the qualification rate has also increased substantially, and that means that people can't qualify. So if you have a house that you want, you currently want $600,000 for, someone might not able to pay $600,000 for it cause they can't afford it. So there's less opportunity for that many buyers to be able to come to the table and be able to purchase your home. That said, I also think there's a bit of something, what we call sentiment right now, which means that they think the market is going in a certain direction, maybe even more into the buyer's favor and people are just waiting and seeing. So bit of a wait and see. I think that happened December. Typically in December we do see a slowdown in terms of the number of transactions. You know, people have this thing that they do called holidays, so they go away a little bit for for time.

I know a lot of people that I see are in beautiful places far away from this this weather in in Ontario right now. But I am noticing that that may be a bit of a factor and even more of a factor in 2022. In terms of the average price we're just hovering just over the $600,000 mark. Obviously that would, the average price is down quite a bit from what it was earlier in 2022. In terms of the months of inventory, about 3.8 months of inventory, which is quite much, a much bigger number than at us before in terms of time on market. I'm also noticing time on market is shifted up when I'm listing something. Right now, I'm telling people, you know, be prepared for 60 days on market that isn't unrealistic for you anymore.

I think average is probably hovering between a month or two on market. Obviously before, you know, we're looking at seven days on market and that wasn't even really real because we were holding offers on almost every single home in the city. So the other question that I am getting a lot right now is, where are things gonna go in 2023, Phil? And honestly, I, I ordered the crystal ball is what I've been telling you every day. I ordered the crystal ball for Christmas, but it did not come unfortunately. So I'm gonna have to base this on experience and just what I'm currently seeing in the market. So, so far, believe it or not, in my little world of real estate in London, 2023 is actually started off relatively quickly. The listings that I do have on market are getting showings again the listings that I have, I'm coming have a lot of listings coming up on market, which is gonna be interesting.

My buyers are actually starting to to look pretty much, much more aggressively than they were in 2022. And I think some people just say, okay, we're gonna have to get used to some higher interest rate environments compared to what we had before. <Laugh>, which is definitely not a high interest rate environment compared to what people saw previous years, but it's still, you know, higher than it was. So it's all relative to us. And in terms of what I see in the year ahead, I mean when I talk to mortgage brokers and I talk to, when I look at reading, you know, things from economists that I'm seeing, one of the things I'm, I've, I find really interesting, again, this is just something I'm reading, I have no idea exactly where, where interest rates are going, cuz obviously the economy impacts that.

But if interest rates do start to come down or even stay the same for the, for the next little while they think, you know, January probably will go up. We had some very good job numbers, which I was reading about, which will lead to probably them increasing interest rates to potentially cause more of a recession as what I was reading. You can have your opinion on that. I know I have mine. But what what's interesting to me is that if interest rates do say the same or start to come down maybe in the later half of the year, will that have the same impact that they've had going the other way? Right? But I think there's again, that when we go back to sentiment and what's happening in the market, I think that you could see a, a shift happen and yeah, I'm a little biased.

I'm a real estate agent, but I also own real estate and I think it's a great investment for, for me personally. So yeah, obviously I want real estate to go up over the long, long term but what's best for my clients you know, right now really depends on, on who I'm working with. So I think in terms of what we see is, yeah, if interest rates come down, you could see the market go up again. I'm noticing a lot of the GTA folks are coming back to London whether you like it or not, and that a lot of investors are coming back as well and trying to get deals right now. The thing that's interesting to me is that yes, you are paying a higher

Payment per month right now with the interest rate increase, but I mean it's, it's likely based on everything I'm reading is not gonna be forever. So I think a lot of people are thinking, okay, I, I pay my highest, my higher mortgage rate for the next year, maybe even less, and then I've locked in my price. So I've locked in my price at say 50 to a hundred thousand dollars less than I would've before. And then I'm able to obviously keep that house for a long term. So what I tell people with real estate is if you can't really own it for five years, I wouldn't really, I'd be very cautious about entering that that purchase. Not saying you have to own it for five years. Hey, if the market goes really well or something changes in your life, of course you could sell it.

But the thing is, is you might want to be able to have a plan to rent it out if the market doesn't go completely in your favor for the next little while. Third question I'm seeing is, you know, what have I noticed that's different in the real estate market and what will be different in 2023 compared to 2022? The big one that I'm noticing is that the conditions that we're seeing on offers are significantly different. And there's more of them <laugh> than there was in in early 2022 for sure. I mean, for the latter half of 2022, we were seeing obviously conditions were back in a, in a big way. So what conditions are we seeing? Well, you're gonna see the typical ones. Financing's really important. I would put that in every single deal you possibly can if you're, if you're a buyer just because you want to talk to a mortgage broker or your bank or your a lender, but you also gotta make sure that house appraises at the value that it should.

And you also wanna make sure that you have all your ducks in a row. So just someone telling you, yeah, you're good, you're good, you filled out the online calculator, that's not good enough. You need to provide documents. You want to have someone that you trust on the other side of that process to ensure that you can move forward with that deal. So typically you're gonna see a finance condition. You have five business days, maybe, maybe a little bit longer, a little bit less depending on the situation. Home inspections are back for sure. If I had the opportunity, the home inspection, I would do it. Just because you can avoid some of the issues. You obviously wanna have a good competent home inspector. The few that I work with in London are amazing. And I honestly did one in my own house when I purchased it because I wanted to make sure that there wasn't anything I was missing.

Yeah, there's a few things I missed probably. I'm not a home inspector, I'm kind of a generalist, so there are things that I want to look at and make sure that I understand it or at least have a question for those things when it comes to home inspection. The other one that I'm seeing when it comes to conditions is a home to sell condition. So this can get a little bit complicated and it can be a bit of a checkers game being played or maybe a dominoes would be a better term to use there. But when one deal is able to go through, obviously another deal is sometimes able to go through. So for example, if you purchased a house in Mississauga, we'll say, and you're moving there from London, you put that offer conditional and you're selling your house in London, so you're able to kind of lock that house up.

The problem is, is that you're not really locking it up, cuz typically what the other side will say, well the seller that in this case in Mississauga would say is, Hey, we're good with your offer, we'll take it. But we're also gonna do what's called an escape clause. Escape clause typically lasts about 24 to 72 hours in that range somewhere. And that escape clause is basically giving them the opportunity to accept another offer and giving you the opportunity to either firm up your offer very quickly or walk away from it. It's not allowing them to take a better offer and then just kick you out for with no with no timeframe at all. But it really puts the pressure on you when you do have that going. Cuz you could have your house listed in London and they get another offer, then you only have 24 hours or 48 hours to kind of firm up or, or depart from the deal.

If you're not comfortable moving forward, obviously you'd have to take your house off the market and cancel things. So that condition isn't fun. I don't like it but you know, I have to protect my clients. So we put them into to deals when we, we have to. The other thing you'll, you know, you're, you're gonna see also just more conditions in general is kind of, kind of, I mentioned firm deals are happening. Like I've done, I did a few in November, I believe two of them. But they're not typical. I'd say if they are happening, they're probably at lower price points, like under maybe 500,000, which I know isn't low to everybody, but under that price range. And they'll be obviously encountering multiple offers. The last kind of thing I did just want to touch on today is just what are the kind of the, the tips I have for the 2023 market so far.

I mean, when we look at 2022, I, my tips that I had for you in January, February were vastly different than what I had for you in October November because the market ch changed so drastically. I'm hoping it doesn't change drastically again because it's really hard for everyone to cope with it. But if it does, I mean I could see it potentially going the other way, which would be which would really interesting. Again, this is just my opinion. I don't know, I don't have a crystal ball guys. I ordered one again, didn't come. But what I am, you know, thinking about for, for tips is just make sure that I'm financing. You've talked with a mortgage broker or a your bank or a lender before you've started the house, really buying process because what you would've qualified for maybe a year ago, <laugh>, which doesn't seem like a long time to some people, is probably a lot different than what you can qualify for now just because of the qualification rate and how high it has become because of the rising interest rates. We want to make sure that you have that done before we really start looking because what I don't want you to do is go into house and then be really, really

Disappointed cuz you actually have no ability to buy that house. And then you have to look at a lower price point. So it's kind of like putting the toothpaste back in the tube. Not the easiest process to do. And it's not fun for you, it's not fun for me, it's not really fun for the sellers either that we're looking at their houses. So definitely want to make sure you do that. I mean, that would've been a tip I always have. But right now I think it's really, really important to kind of take a look. Again, if you need someone to talk to about that, let me know. Just text me and I can help you out with with, with that and just kind of connecting with someone that's competent and knows what they're doing. In addition to that, you know, I would just kind of be prepared to, to look at a lot of houses.

If you're looking at buying right now, you might wanna start the process a little bit earlier. A lot of folks are looking at potentially getting a couple options, trying an offer on one option. If it doesn't work out, they'll try on another option. Inventory with it being a lot higher than it was does give you more options than you know, than we definitely saw at the earlier half of 2022. And you're probably avoiding multiple offers on most of those houses or almost all of those houses. So we can try, try an offer. If it doesn't work out, we can try another offer. You know, the buyers are getting much more in the driver's seat. C could that change? Absolutely. you know, I'm noticing again, that tug of wars be game is being played and some sellers are just not willing to come down to a certain price because, you know, they wanna do things too.

They wanna buy another property somewhere else they, you know, just won't sell. They'll just wait it out, which you know, fundamentally I could see why that that could work as well. So that is it for the podcast today. It's Phil Bailey here. I'm a realtor in London from the House Sigma team. If you have any questions that you want to kind of go into more detail on, or even if you have a thought on what you're seeing in the market, I'm really curious on that. Also, I'm really welcome to talking about other topics. This is kind of just a, you know, start of 2023, talk about a few questions that I'm having and kind of get the ball rolling for you. But I'd love to, to hear what you would like to see on the podcast. Or hey, maybe you're a guest, you'd want to come on the podcast.

I'm, I'm typically open to that as long as it's relevant to the London real estate market and you're not trying to sell everyone something <laugh>. But if you want to get ahold of me, my direct number, you can text me please 2 2 6 9 7 7 2 3 4 8. Please don't spam me, just text me questions or be legitimate. 2 2 6 9 7 7 2 3 4 8. Or you can also just go on my website just ww phil bailey.ca and you can contact me from there. I hope everyone has a great rest of the January, 2023 and I'm always here to help. Again, it's Phil Bailey from the House Sigma team on a local realtor in the London market. And I'm always here to.

Originally published on October 12, 2022

Hey friends, Phil Bailey here from the London Ontario Real Estate Podcast. We're on episode 22 of the podcast. If you're curious on what listing agents and buyers agents are thinking about right now in London, stay tuned in the episode and I'll tell y'all about it. I know it's been a little while since we last did a podcast episode. So things have changed in the market quite substantially. In 2022, we went from what I would consider an extreme seller's market to now much more of a balanced or even buyer's market. Some people will say, this guy is falling, but if you look at the average prices over the last little while, things do seem to be evening out a little bit. But that said showing activity when I am listing properties is down substantially over what, what it was in January and February.

So, firstly, let me talk about what we're doing with listings right now in London. I'd say about half my business is listings and half my business is buyers. So I think I have a bit of a unique perspective on this. Compared to some other agents in the market in London, when the, when we're listing right now, we're definitely doing everything we should have done before when the market was hot. We're doing good marketing, we're taking good photos, good video, doing all the same things. The difference and the big difference right now is pricing needs to be closer to what you actually want to get for the house. In my perspective, there's obviously different ways to price, but in January and February, almost always, we were listing at a certain price holding offers, getting multiple offers and trying to drive that price up as much as we possibly could for the clients that hired us, which were our sellers.

In addition to that, when I'm talking to clients right now that are selling properties, I have to talk about one measure, and that's called days on Market. We've seen days on market rise all year round here really since I'd say about February. I look at March as really the transition month that we saw in London but days on market really rose substantially, and now I'm starting to see it maybe even off. So I think on average, like average wise right now, we're probably in the low 20 days on market. If you look at overall stats for the whole city, I'm usually saying expect your house to be there for, you know, a month. If you price correctly, if you want to swing for the fences, what you did in January and February, you're gonna have some big disappointment to deal with. And I, I wouldn't recommend doing that.

I would really recommend pricing close to where you want to be. Open yourself up for maybe some negotiation. Understand that you're gonna be dealing with conditions on almost every single offer. And just be ready for that because you do not want to be thinking that multiple offers are the norm, cuz they're just simply not anymore. You probably are gonna be dealing with one or two buyers that really want to buy the property that you have, depending on where you're pricing it. So that would be my recommendation on the listing side and, and obviously showing activity has been down substantially. I think there's a few factors for this, but I, I definitely don't have a crystal ball to see where things are going. So don't don't blame me for this, but one of the things I am noticing is that really interest rates have impacted things for sure.

Affordability, when I talk to mortgage brokers in town, I mean, affordability of clients has just gone down substantially. So when someone was able to afford say, a $600,000 house, that same person now maybe is at, I dunno, 500,000. That makes a huge difference to what is selling and what prices they're selling at. In addition to that, I think with the pandemic being on its way out or really not something we're thinking about as much anymore, I think that that has had, had a huge impact on making people want to make decisions very quickly when it came to buying. And there was a lot of pent up demand from even a lot of places outside of London to be able to move to London. So work from home arrangements changed. People were able to maybe retire and move to London and sell their properties.

But what I saw with the pandemic in particular is that people just wanted to spend more time at home. So they really made a huge effort to be able to purchase homes and get into the market when they could. Obviously now I think things have shifted. I know some people are definitely back in the office. I'm not seeing the same demand from the GTA that I was before. But there definitely is some agents that are still working around that. That said, overall, you know, I am a real estate agent. I'm very biased here, but you know, I purchased a house this year, so just so you understand, I've been in this with the rest of you. I'm not just sitting on my hands. What I think is really important here to note is that I think London's in a very unique position overall.

London, Ontario, we're very close to Toronto. We have that behemoth of Toronto that has money that's definitely going in in, in putting their money into the London market. When you look at price comparisons, it's not even really a question. We also have a lot of unique opportunities for real estate investors in London. So when we're listing properties, we have to pay attention to that. We have obviously a lot of doctors in town. We have a lot of nurses in town that need to work in our hospitals. We also have two large post-secondary institutions with Western and Shaw being right there and close by. What's interesting on the listing side is that for my investor clients, even with interest rates up, I'm seeing a substantial increase in the rents in London right now. I know that this is a huge inflationary thing that's happening right now in the area, but we're talking substantial difference in, in rent prices going from paying, you know, $1,300 for a two bedroom apartment to now struggling to find a one bedroom for under say 1800, 2000.

We're having, if you're in a, a lease right now and you're going month to month and your owner and your the owner of the property can move in, sometimes they're doing that and I'm seeing that happening a lot. Not seeing, I agree with it, but you know, it, it is becoming a major, major issue. So when we're looking at the investor side, you're seeing lower prices. Obviously there's more of a payment though for that lower price sometimes because of the interest rate going up, but the way that the price have fallen, the interest rates haven't made up for the difference in my, in my opinion because you're not dealing with multiple offers anymore. So if you're able to buy, say a home that was listed at 500,000, you buy it for 500,000. Even with interest rates being higher, that's substantially different than the same house, you know, that I was selling for say 700, $800,000 back in January.

So that brings me to what I wanted to talk about on the buyer side as well. So when I'm a buyer's agent right now, I'm really giving some very clear advice to my clients. Make sure that you understand that there's inventory on the market so we want to be able to view that inventory and shop around a little bit. The best client right now that I'm able to work for and get the best deal for has a couple options of homes that they would consider. They will try an offer on the one if it doesn't work out, we're trying another one a couple days later, maybe even maybe even this the day after. I wouldn't recommend putting two offers on the same on different properties by the way, cuz that is can be a little tough if you get both of them. But what I would say is act quickly if you can find some options that work for either your investment or for your family.

I know real estate is always has an investor view to pretty much everyone I talk to. But there's also just people that, you know, they need a place for their family. So if you're looking for somewhere to live in town, I would definitely take a look right now because of the inventory being so drastically high. Other point I'm saying right now is, and again, I bought a house this year, so you know, you can, you can say, oh I'm, I'm definitely biased and I am cuz I'm a real estate agent. But I agree with what I'm saying. And if I wasn't real estate agent tomorrow, I would hire a real estate agent. So what what is interesting on the buyer side right now is that I think a lot of people are, are worried because the market obviously has had such a shift in London but they're trying to time the, the market at the very, very, very bottom.

And just like almost every investor that I talk to that invests in stocks and the general market will tell you most of the time, you're not gonna be able to time the bottom completely. My suggestion is to find a couple options, like I said, and make an offer that you think is fair based on what we're seeing with happening in the market. Now, when I'm working with buyers, I'm looking at comparables just like we always have. It was very difficult to look at comparables when the market was going up as much as it was <laugh>, but we also had to look at short-term data. So you know that now that I'm a House Sigma in London, I think that one of the biggest reasons, and I talked about it previously on the podcast that I wanted to work with House Sigma, is because they're so data driven in everything they do, they give you so much tools and they treat you like, you know, you are, you're, you're an adult and you can make your own decisions.

And then of course the real estate agent is there to guide you through that process. So, you know, we're giving you the data, we're helping you guide through that process. And what I've found with the data right now is that if I go back six months and look at comparables, it's not really a fair comparison what I need to be looking at, and it makes my job a little bit more difficult for sure, because I need to look at comparables that have happened in the last, say, 30 days, 60 days. If I'm looking at comparables from six months ago, I'm, I think I'm really doing my buyer clients a disservice and I'm doing my seller clients a disservice too because those, those numbers are just not around right now, and we're not expecting multiple offers on most properties that we're listing. So when you're a buyer right now, again, the advice that I would have is check out the inventory that's on the market, find options, make sure you get your criteria right from the start, which is something I've been telling my clients forever.

Get that criteria right from the start and then when you find something that works, make a decision on it, see if you can see if you can move forward with it. If that offer doesn't work out, okay, cool, we'll try another one. If it doesn't work out, we'll try another one. But, you know, sitting on the hands and waiting for the market to change is something that I'll think a lot of people are doing right now, which I completely understand. And if you can, great. But if you need to buy a house because you're in a, you know, a small condo and you're having twins, well, you might want to make that move a little bit quicker on the investor side, you know what you're doing most of the time. But when I am working with new investors, all that matters is the numbers.

So we wanna look at those numbers and we want to make sure that we've factored all of that in. I think right now in the market, we have the opportunity to be able to make more more money than we have in a long time. But maybe we'll go back to the norm, you know, of, you know, 3%, 4% growth in the real estate market which, you know, to me, I'll, I'll take every, I'll take, I'll still make my investment in, in real estate as much as I possibly can with that number being where it is, just because of the fact that it is a highly leveraged investment for almost everyone. And if the market does continue to go up over the very long term, I'm a happy camper. So this is Phil Bailey. I am at the House Sigma Brokerage in London, Ontario.

You can text me if you have any ideas for future episodes or you just have a question on the market and maybe you have an idea of where you're seeing it going. I know I'm always curious about your particular area and what you are seeing because you know, I, as much as I do work throughout the city and in the surrounding cities and towns, you know, I'm always curious to see what's happening in a particular neighborhood and what your, what you're seeing. And maybe we can have a chat about that. So you can text me. My direct cell phone number is

(226) 977-2348 or you can always email me at phil bailey host sigma.com. Hope everyone has a wonderful October and I'll talk to y'all soon. Take care.

Originally published on July 21, 2021

Hello everyone. This is the London, Ontario real estate podcast. This is episode 11. Thanks so much for taking a listen today. We are into the end of July of 2021. Um, things are really starting to open up out there. It is rib Fest weekend in London. It is Thursday that I'm recording. So I just took a walk by. Things are looking great out there. There's lots of amazing smelling food, beer, snacks, everything you can imagine, right by Victoria Park, certainly different than what we've been seeing over the last little while in the London area with all the lockdowns going on. I hope that everyone stays safe out there and has a lot of fun, uh, in the next few days. And as we get into August, I hope things keep progressing the way they are, because it looks like we're seeing some light at the end of the tunnel

For today's episode. I really just wanted to give you an update on what I'm seeing in the London area market. Right now, things have had a pretty significant shift over the last say few weeks. Um, maybe a couple months, if you look at it in hindsight's always 2020 in those, in those terms, but what I'm noticing is there's less action on properties. So instead of saying, you know, maybe there's 20 offers, 30 offers in some of these homes that we were seeing back in March area maybe even earlier in this year as well. And on some, some semi-detached for example, that I had some experience with now, you might be seeing maybe one or two, so it looks like activity is slowing. We're not exactly sure why this is. And I think when we see the numbers from July, we might be able to have a bit of an update and, you know, detached homes still averaging close to that $600,000 mark in, in the London area.

I think part of it could be that with things backing, opening back up thing, people may be losing a little bit of focus on real estate, and there's just not that pent up energy to have to buy a place right away, because I can't do anything else, but sit in my backyard right now, we saw that a lot with folks that were looking at homes with pools and, and larger backyards, they just needed a little bit more space cause there was really nothing else to do. The other thing that it could be is with maybe a non-permanent lockdown in places such as the GTA, that was having a huge impact on buyers coming to the London area. And I think that now those folks from the GTA are a little bit less concerned with having to buy immediately. And there's just that less of a frenzy that we are noticing back earlier this year, if we go back to when COVID started, there was almost a freeze of the market that happened in say March of last year.

And it was concerning to all of us. We didn't really know what was going to happen. There was a lot of listings that came up and that were then canceled. And then when they came up again, there wasn't that much inventory in the market. So those listings were selling quickly at high prices and that climbed and climbed. I'm not seeing it go down in a significant way, but I do think that we should be looking at numbers from several months, rather than just looking at what's sold on the street in the last few weeks. You know, I'd never recommend anyone do that, but if you know, John down the street just sold his house for a certain amount and you are going to be listing your house. I think you have to remember that one sale doesn't make a market.

And that's what I've been telling my clients is that we need to have some data across the board. We can't just look at one sale and think, oh, well, if John got that for this house and it's, mine's exactly the same then of course, I'm going to get that because what I've seen is that sometimes it's just, who shows up on offer day. We, we work really hard to market the property. And, you know, I know when, when I'm working with my clients, I, I make sure that I'm setting that bar as high as I possibly can, but I also don't want to over promise something to them. So we have to look at data and we need to be able to back that up with actual recent sales. And I don't want just one sale. I'd like to look at several. So if you were in the London market right now looking at listing or property, I would definitely have a chat and we can kind of give you an idea of what, you know, we think that home is, is worth based on those comparable sales over time.

I would go back at least a year and look at things. Where's the trends. And also I think having someone in the market, so having a real estate professional to work together with this is really, really important right now because we're seeing what's happening every single day. And if you read the newspaper, they haven't really quite caught up to this quite yet. I don't think in, in the London area, uh, because they're really looking at those general stats over time. I think general stats are, are interesting to look at, but I think it's, what's really important is that we need to look at your particular area, your particular home type, the condition of your home. And of course, you know, sometimes you have to sell quicker than maybe even like two. Maybe it's a job change. Uh, you know, family changes. There's lots of different things that can happen.

So what I, what I guess my main point

Is there is that don't be very, very careful looking at one sale and thinking that's going to make the difference because the trends may have been progressing upward. But when I was used to getting, say 20 offers on a property, and that's both on the buying and the listing side for, for me and my clients over the last year or two lately, you know, last couple of weeks, I've, I've maybe dealt with, uh, some that have had no offers at all. And we're the only ones at the table. Uh, I've been on both the listing and the buying side for that one. Um, typically, you know, three to five offers is something that I've been seeing quite a lot of where I think if we were looking at listing that same home, six months ago, we might've had something like 25 offers. And is that impacting price?

Well, of course, it's going to, to a certain degree, if we can get three offers to show up on offer day that are both all serious, uh, that can be a very good situation for a seller still. I think what we don't want to do is we don't want to have expectations that we're always going to be selling over asking price no matter what happens for eternity. And I think that's where you have to be very, very careful when you're pricing your home on the market right now, because we don't want to get into a spot where we have to do a price reduction, uh, or we need to, which we're we're seeing quite a bit of lately is, is actually taking home off the market, losing some precious, uh, days to, for example, maybe put laminate in the basement, maybe do some fixes, something when that's just stuff should all been done before you listed the property.

The other thing you're seeing is that for example, if a homeless at, at 409, 9,000, you expected to get 525, you didn't get 525, then you're, relisting that home for 525,000. So what I like to do that, of course not. I don't think anyone would like to take that approach. Is it going to happen sometimes with the shifting market? Absolutely. But I think taking a more conservative approach with your listing price and realizing that you want to have at least a few sales to back up your, your data where you think you're going to end up at the end of the day is very, very, very important right now. Uh, what I've seen is if you're listed at the incorrect price, not based on market experience, you can be on the market for a heck of a lot longer, and you can also have to do price reductions, which would put you in a spot where people are thinking what the heck's wrong with this place.

You know, why has it been in the market for 30 plus days when everything else is selling in approximately seven days on market in London? The thing that I've done for my clients is I've set up a list of homes that have been on the market for more than 30 days. And I'll be honest, when I set this list up, it was probably last year. I wasn't getting anything on it. I would get maybe an email every month. Now I'm getting an email every other day, every day, sometimes multiple emails in a day. And what that means is that homes are selling around the price that they're actually listed at. And maybe even a little bit below. Um, of course, if you average this all out, there's still, there's still definitely, I think the market is trending in the seller's direction or it's it's in the sellers direction right now where it's going to go in six months though.

I don't think anyone has a crystal ball. I think anyone that tells you they do is, uh, potentially misleading you. Uh, what I think is though is really, really important is that you figure out where you really want to be with that price. Um, and you be maybe a little bit more conservative than, than you think, uh, you used to be able to, you used to be, it didn't really matter where that, where that price started. You would always end up with, you know, 1520 offers in the last little while, as long as you marketed the home properly and price it properly. Now, if you're ending up with, you know, three to five, maybe even one, maybe nothing for a few weeks then of course the, the buyer has a little bit more say at that table than they ever have before. If you're on the buying side, what I'd still highly highly recommend is that you make sure that you get your things in order, in terms of your conditions before you start looking for a home.

So one of the big ones is your financing. I want to make sure that that is rock solid, especially in the market right now. Um, appraisals have been all over the place and if you don't have any room to play with, you can get into big trouble with that. Uh, definitely talk to your mortgage professional. I'm not a mortgage professional, but I always will put you in touch with someone who can, can speak to that. Uh, the other thing that I've done recently, and I think has been really helpful is to actually do that home inspection in advance of the offer day. I think this becomes increasingly more valuable when you're in a market that you might only have three or four other offers because, you know, if you have 25 offers in a home, there's a good chance other folks have done the same thing and you might not be the only one at the table to do that.

Recently, I have been the only one with some clients who were, who were very smart and, uh, and diligent about getting those conditions worked out in advance of making an offer. And it just made us successful on offer day where you want to make sure those conditions are dealt with, you know, there there's lots of times I've seen, uh, you know, believe it or not, they'll people will take a offer. That's actually at a less amount of money for them, as long as you have a clean offer. So remember price isn't everything, when it comes to that offer, you have to deal with your conditions in advance if possible, and it is possible to do so. Uh, you always have to realize that there's some risk with not including any conditions, but I'm not saying don't include conditions and don't deal with them at all.

What I'm saying is deal with those conditions in advance of making an offer. You used to be, we had five to seven business days to deal with those. Now, most of the time we don't. And I think with the changing market, if you're really proactive and you get those things done, you can actually really come out on top and make your offer the most competitive very, very quickly. So that's really all I wanted to mention to all you folks for listening. And I really do appreciate you listening today is that the market is changing quite quickly. Uh, I, again, I think general trends are important to, to think about they're more interesting to me than anything. I think what's really though important is to look at particular numbers in particular neighborhoods and particular home types of what you have to offer or what you're going to be purchasing.

I'm always happy to help. I'm always happy to dig into give you my ideas on a particular area of what I'm seeing in the market. I really work across the city of London and even areas in St. Thomas and around the city of, uh, of London as well. And I'd love to share that experience with you and give you an, a kind of idea of what I'm seeing happening.  This is July of 2021, and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend ahead and I will chat with you soon. Take care.