Send us your address and the best contact number, to info@calgaryhomelistings.ca, or go to www.Cranstonca.com for more information. This event is sponsored by my team at Scott Baker and Associates, and the Cranston Community Association. The community association is having a BBQ at  Century Hall that day to kick it off. We will be supplying a yard sign, a directional sign, and some maps for you. Hope for sunshine, and come on out. It goes, rain or shine.

If price always follows activity in a real estate market

My experience with the selling public is one of a delayed reaction to the ‘water cooler’ talk, You know, the ‘my neighbour just got multiple offers in two days’ kind of banter that gets people painting, cleaning, de-cluttering, sometimes hastily, to get in on a good thing. That reaction time can sometimes be as long as three months. I would suggest that we don’t have three months to grab the opportunity of a Seller’s market. One major difference from those halcyon days of 2006-07 I’ve noticed, thankfully, is that buyers are continuing to be more cautious, doing their due diligence, and making sound decisions with their offers. A Seller’s market will no doubt cramp the strategy of the buyer that needs to ‘sleep on it’, or look at a few more homes before writing an offer, but not to the degree we saw back then.

 Our advice to our clients during this period will be is this: To those wanting to sell, get your home ready sooner than later, and provide value to the buyer. If a home is perceived to be a good deal, and in good condition, it attracts a higher volume of buyers. While that statement is always true, in an active market, your chances of multiples offers increases if you have a line-up to see it. To potential buyers, make sure you are ready to buy. That means get pre-approved, have a deposit ready for an offer, and try to narrow down exactly what you’re looking for. There’s no worse feeling for a buyer than seeing a home they would have written on go to somebody else. Our buyers always have searches set up for them, so they see the latest listings that match their wish list sent to them immediately. The good news for buyers? Your competition isn’t running around writing offers for thousands over list (yet) without any conditions attached to the offer, even when they’re found in a competing situation. While this isn’t, thankfully, another 2006-07 market, it is a new ballgame for those who have experience in the real estate market since then. With interest rate rises only a matter of time, we suspect that this market will continue to tighten for buyers, unless inventory catches up, in a hurry. We’ll be keeping an eye on this.

I’m excited to announce our new Home Page is live on CalgaryHomeListings.ca.

When I first decided that I wanted a website that was different than most ‘cut and paste’ websites in my industry, I knew that it had to be one thing for real estate; easy for people to find the information they wanted. If you can find the home or homes that you are interested in, then Sellers have a better tool for their listings, and Buyers have a great spot to find homes, condos, or acreages. This now our fifth version of CalgaryHomeListings.ca. Over the years we’ve added social media, video, our blog, the featured communities section, quick search, and Walkscore and mapping functions to serve you better. We hope you like the changes. Please let us know what you think. We will be making more upgrades throughout this year, so watch for them. It is our commitment to make this the only place you need for real estate information in Calgary.

Calgary MLS sales activity

As price always follows activity, I would look to a healthy spring market. As we move further away from the boom years of 2006/07, and with interest rates still a their lowest levels, it becomes a good time for those move-up buyers who have been sitting on the fence waiting for improvements, to start doing their research on that possibility. One note of caution regarding pricing expectations; DO NOT rely on your tax assessment to gauge the price of your home. Depending on the community, age of home, and improvements made that didn’t require permits, that number can be 20% high or low. My own home’s tax assessment dropped by 20% this year, with no changes to it. The market, obviously has not dropped 20% in the last year. In fact, as the article points out, our average price has climbed again.

A thorough market analysis by a Realtor will provide you with the right range to market your home at. We can control the marketing, the availability, and how it shows. We can’t control a neighbour who needs the money and dumps his home at a low price, we can’t move the house, (usually) and we can’t control economic forces that change whether buyers feel they can buy right away or not.

What the stats are showing us, though, is a nice steady climb back to the kind of activity that allows both buyers and sellers to achieve their goals. It’s all subject to change without (much) notice, of course.

2. Warm it up. Ensure that your home is warm (but not too warm, they’re wearing winter coats). Leave the fireplace on, keep the furnace at a comfortable temperature, and set any in-floor heating to warm the toes of buyers. They may have coats on, but a cold tile bathroom floor might turn them off.                                  A warm floor is inviting, and helps them to envision a comfy home to live in.

3. Daylight. If possible, promote showings in the daylight hours. Have the blinds open on west or south facing rooms to show how bright and cheery the home can be in the dead of winter.

4. Lights, please. As our winters only give us about 9 or 10 hours of sunlight, have lights on timers inside and out, so that the home is inviting to buyers driving the area, particularly if the home is vacant or unattended for long periods.

5. The nose knows. Surveys show that the favourite aroma in a home is chocolate chip cookies. Other scents that are pleasing are vanilla, citrus, and cinnamon. Don’t overdo it! A strong scent can be overpowering and lead buyers to wonder if something is being covered up with the scent.

6. Shoes off. Have a sign at the front door that kindly asks that all outer footwear be removed. This will help to keep your home ready for the next buyer, so they can see it as clean as the one before.

7. Festive Moods. We celebrate numerous occasions in the winter, so decorate your home with seasonal arrangements and art. Leave a plate of cookies out with a note to have one, set the table like it is ready for a dinner party. A home that entertains is inviting, and stirs the emotions in buyers.

Remember, if you sell your him in the winter, you’re probably moving in the spring, which is going to be warmer. Preparing your home now for a winter sale will pay dividends, and allow you to enjoy the rest of the year in your new home, while everyone else battles it out the rest of the year! In Calgary, our winter can be anywhere from 3-6 months of winter-like temperatures. Calgary real estate sells all year round, despite the impression by many that spring and summer is the time to sell. Getting a jump on everyone else might just allow you the time to enjoy the warmer months.

A good example might be if there was an old washer and dryer in the back yard that the buyer wanted removed by closing. The term needs to state that it is to be removed by the seller, at their expense. If it is not removed, there will be a $500 holdback by the lawyer until it is removed. If it isn’t removed by a date agreed to, the money goes to the buyer, presumably to compensate them for the cost and inconvenience of removing it themselves. Again, I have seen similar clauses in contracts where the person writing it simply puts in ‘seller to remove washer and dryer from yard’. That leaves the term open to interpretation, which is a can of worms. Note: your lawyer cannot hold back funds without the other party’s lawyer’s (and client’s) approval unless it is stipulated in the contract.Ask for it up-front.

When the time comes to either write or review an offer, make sure that the terms and conditions are clear and simple. It will save you headaches, or even lawsuits later on.

Stats Canada

The past 5 years has seen such a dramatic development of social media, real estate websites, and, thanks to the now sadly immortal Steve Jobs, mobile phone and apps usage to do basic things such as banking, finding a restaurant, and of course, looking at the MLS. Those Realtors who have chosen to ignore this change  have done so at their own peril, unless their client database is so large that none of these changes make a noticeable dent in their yearly sales totals. That would be perhaps 1% of all Realtors. The fact that I am writing this in a blog is testament enough that the ways we communicate have changed. Blogs feed to Twitter and Facebook, and we promote our listings in some or all of these. My own advertising channels provide clients with exposure on dozens of related websites. As I tell them, when you sell a house, you need to tell everyone.

What these stats also point out is that we are collectively using personal time (or stealing it at the office) to surf, shop, and do research on where to buy, work, gather, and more relevant to this blog post, where to live. For the time being, and I would suggest much further down the road, the public will still need to meet face to face with a Realtor to buy or sell property. There are over a 100 tasks that a Realtor can or will perform in a transaction, so buy a home ‘virtually’ from start to finish remains a fantasy of the tech world. It would be foolish, however, to think that the internet and technology won’t continue to change the way we all do business.

With over 90% of buyers now beginning their home search online, and with the amount of good information available, much of the physical work has been eliminated in the process. That is good news to any Realtor that has had to show 50 or more homes to potential buyers, or to the out-of towner who previously had to fly in, spend a week looking, and close the deal before they left. The internet hasn’t replace organized real estate, but merely enhanced it to those of us who have embraced it in some way, or perhaps almost completely.

It would appear that interest rates may stay low longer than originally predicted, with governments not wanting to cripple any industry that might be affected by a rise in interest rates. The recovery has been bumpier than most would have expected, but people always need a place to live. Combine that with the tax-free component of a primary residence, and buying a home or condo becomes a safer bet than you might have been hearing for the past two or three years. Look to an active fall market in the Calgary area, with both buyers and sellers able to accomplish what they want, as long as everyone plays nice, and doesn’t get too greedy.