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Baby, we got a bubble!?

TripleQ said:
When listed my place last year, it showed up within 24 hours after I filled out the form with my agent.

Once it was sold, it was removed within 24 hours.

While searching for places, I found most sold properties were removed promptly as well.
Click to expand...

Some people list exclusively so it doesn't go on MLS. Some agents are slow to post.

When we bought a few years ago, the listing stayed up for about a week after we bought-- our agent told us that was normal practice (maybe because we had a condition on it?)
 
PinkLucy said:
Some people list exclusively so it doesn't go on MLS. Some agents are slow to post.

When we bought a few years ago, the listing stayed up for about a week after we bought-- our agent told us that was normal practice (maybe because we had a condition on it?)
Click to expand...

My agent told me that properties remain on MLS if they are conditional sold, to keep soliciting business in case the deal falls through. The consumer facing side of the site doesn't tell you its conditional sold, but the agent facing side does.
 
Xenosblitz said:
My agent told me that properties remain on MLS if they are conditional sold, to keep soliciting business in case the deal falls through. The consumer facing side of the site doesn't tell you its conditional sold, but the agent facing side does.
Click to expand...

That is correct!!!
 
That makes sense. As a purchaser though, I didn't like still seeing the property I'd purchased still sitting there :)
 
TripleQ said:
When listed my place last year, it showed up within 24 hours after I filled out the form with my agent.

Once it was sold, it was removed within 24 hours.

While searching for places, I found most sold properties were removed promptly as well.
Click to expand...

It's 2 seperate databases that get updated through an overnight batch.

The realtor site is real-time, where as MLS is previous's day
 
http://www.stockhouse.com/News/CanadianReleasesDetail.aspx?n=8554782

BMO Study: Canadians On Track to be Mortgage-Free in 15 Years
Bank of Montreal BMO
7/4/2012 6:00:04 AM
BMO Study: Canadians On Track to be Mortgage-Free in 15 Years

TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwire) -- 07/04/12 -- With one week to go before the Federal Government's new mortgage rules take effect, a survey released today by BMO Bank of Montreal revealed that Canadians have an average of 15 years left on their mortgages.
The survey, conducted by Leger Marketing revealed:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amount of Years Left on
Mortgage TOTAL BC AB MB/SK ON QC ATL
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5 or less 19% 15% 22% 24% 21% 15% 17%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
6 to 10 19% 22% 13% 20% 21% 17% 16%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
11-15 18% 18% 17% 18% 17% 20% 20%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
16-20 20% 14% 21% 16% 20% 23% 17%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
21-25 13% 11% 12% 11% 13% 14% 17%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over 25 12% 20% 14% 12% 7% 12% 13%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Laura Parsons, Mortgage Expert, BMO Bank of Montreal, said the numbers are encouraging.
"These results suggest homeowners have made responsible choices and are in a good position to be debt-free in a reasonable amount of time," noted Ms. Parsons. "Furthermore, this average mortgage repayment timeline will likely decrease as a result of the new mortgage regulations, as many buyers after July 9 will be required to have 25-year amortizations."
Ms. Parsons added that the lowering of the refinancing limit to 80 per cent of home equity - as included in the new measures - may also encourage some owners to pay down their mortgage faster to increase refinancing options later. That, combined with an amortization of 25 years or fewer, will allow Canadian homeowners to become mortgage-free faster, pay less in total interest and help secure a debt-free retirement.
Sal Guatieri, Senior Economist, BMO Capital Markets, noted that the measures announced last week by Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty will help ease the overall burden of household debt in Canada and have a significant impact in moderating the Canadian real estate market.
"The new rules, which limit the availability of insured mortgages to amortizations of 25 years or fewer and to homes worth less than a million dollars, will curb demand and thus dampen prices," said Mr. Guatieri. "By our estimate, to neutralize the impact on mortgage payments of the amortization rule change, average home prices would need to fall about 3 per cent. By helping to cool the market now, the rule changes should increase the odds of a soft - rather than hard - landing."
The survey also showed how Canadians currently manage their mortgage payments and found:

-- Two in five (43 per cent) prefer to increase their mortgage payments
over time
-- One in five (21 per cent) opt for a lump sum payment; with the majority
(58 per cent) able to afford only a 10 per cent lump sum payment or less
-- One-quarter (24 per cent) do not make any additional payments other than
their basic mortgage payments

BMO provides the following tips and advice to become mortgage-free faster:
Choose a shorter amortization: Choose a mortgage with a shorter amortization, which allows you to begin building equity in your home sooner. A shorter amortization will help you pay less in total interest, protect against the possibility of rising interest rates and help secure a debt-free retirement.
Increase your payments: Paying a little more on your principle can shorten the length of your mortgage. Rounding up your payments - even by a few dollars - can shave off a few monthly payments at the end of the mortgage.
Switch to bi-weekly: Try to increase the frequency of your payments from monthly to bi-weekly. Bi-weekly payments take advantage of the number of weeks in the year. If you split the full payment into bi-weekly payments, you'll end up paying 26 half-payments, or the equivalent of 13 full payments in one year.
The Leger Marketing survey was completed on-line from March 19th to March 22nd, 2012, using Leger Marketing's online panel, LegerWeb, with a sample of 1000 Canadian homeowners. A probability sample of the same size would yield a margin of error of +/- 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
About BMO Financial Group
Established in 1817 as Bank of Montreal, BMO Financial Group is a highly-diversified North American financial services organization. With total assets of $525 billion as at April 30, 2012, and more than 46,000 employees, BMO Financial Group provides a broad range of retail banking, wealth management and investment banking products and solutions.
 
rbt said:
But you hadn't bought it yet. You were still negotiating portions of the agreement.
Click to expand...

Hence the smiley. It was conditional upon inspection because we bought sight unseen. We inspected two days after offer but the property was still listed. I believe there was also some credit check required by the seller. They were probably waiting on paperwork. Or the selling agent was slow. She was a bit of a PITA.
 
^^^
In fairness Pink Lucy, if you were the seller you would not want the property removed until all the conditions were removed.
There really is no hurry to get the listing removed within a day except maybe for the agent because his office may be bombarded with calls for an expired listing. The other reason agents sometimes leave the listing up is "for advertising" and hopefully getting maybe a client who was calling about a listing without an agent and maybe the agent can "act" for the new client.
 
In Vancouver, the seller’s market recedes
Tara Perkins, Wendy Stueck
Toronto, Vancouver — The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Jul. 04 2012, 1:37 PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Jul. 04 2012, 7:38 PM EDT

Vancouver’s housing market is cooling to the point that the balance appears to be shifting in favour of buyers for the first time in years.
Prices in the country’s most-expensive real estate market remain stable, but activity has dropped sharply.
The number of sales in June, normally one of the busiest months of the year for home deals, dropped more than 17 per cent from May and 27.6 per cent below June, 2011, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said Wednesday.
Economists welcomed the decline in sales as an early sign that a correction is taking root, and said prices are likely to follow suit.
While that would not please many homeowners, it could provide some relief to policy makers both in Ottawa and British Columbia. A slowdown now decreases the chance of a more severe correction when interest rates rise later.
Local officials have been grappling with how to deal with what Vancouver’s mayor has deemed to be “an affordability crisis,” one that has been a long time in the making.
The benchmark price of a detached home in the city is now $961,600. That is up nearly 35 per cent from three years ago and about 50 per cent higher than in Toronto.
While there is anecdotal evidence that foreign investors are losing their appetite for real estate in the Vancouver, experts remain perplexed as to exactly why the city is seeing such a decline in transactions right now.
Toronto’s equivalent statistics will be released on Thursday, but mid-month indicators from the city’s real estate board suggest that sales are holding relatively steady and new listings continue to rise.
“The Vancouver market is leading the Toronto market in terms of a correction,” said Toronto-Dominion Bank deputy chief economist Derek Burleton, who is calling for price declines of at least 15 per cent in both cities. “Toronto’s housing market correction is more likely to be a story of 2013, 2014.”
A decline in prices tends to lag a decline in sales by one or two quarters, Mr. Burleton said.
The average price of a home in Vancouver rose 90 per cent from 2002 to 2007, compared with 40 per cent in Toronto, according to TD.
But Toronto has seen prices increase more quickly since the financial crisis, adding to the view that Toronto is lagging its western cousin.
Vancouver’s slowdown is “striking, because nothing has really fundamentally changed in the market. It’s hard to pinpoint. Something has affected the psychology,” Mr. Burleton said.

Only 2,362 properties changed hands in the Greater Vancouver area last month. June is normally high season for home sales, and that is the lowest level of sales recorded in the city for that month since the year 2000.
Tom Choy, a real estate agent with Sutton West Coast Realty, who has been in business since 1992, said he has noticed the slowdown. One customer backed out of a condo purchase after new mortgage rules were announced last month, saying his bank had told him that the new maximum debt-service ratios meant his planned purchase wouldn’t work unless his wife also earned an income.
Other customers who are close to the federal government’s new maximum debt ratios have also stepped away from purchases, Mr. Choy said. At the same time, he has had homeowners who are looking to sell reduce their asking prices.
“Conditions are favouring buyers, which means that buyers are going to have some negotiating leverage, increased selection, and an opportunity to get better terms,” said Eugen Klein, president of Vancouver’s real estate board.
“Vancouver has had about 10 years of it being a record-setting sellers market, so it’s a change.”
While sales decline, fewer people are listing their homes on the market. New listings in June were 18.9 per cent below those of May, and three per cent lower than a year ago.
A composite benchmark measure of house prices in the region suggests that prices are still higher than a year ago, but fell 0.7 per cent over the course of the month.
CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal agreed that the slowdown that’s underway in Vancouver will soon begin in Toronto.
“We see less investment activity in Vancouver, and less Chinese money entering the city,” he said. “This is just the beginning of a downward trend in Vancouver. There is a bit of housing market fatigue.”
Economists also say that the recent round of mortgage insurance changes that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty unveiled last month will accelerate softening in real estate markets across the country. The new rules, which kick in on Monday, will, among other things, cut the maximum length of insured mortgages from 30 years to 25.
Mr. Klein said he expected to see indications of a rush in activity prior to the changes taking effect, but hasn’t seen any so far.
“We thought that people would see a fervour of activity from people trying to get in under the line of the due date, but members haven’t been telling us that that’s the case,” he said. “So we don’t know if the information is really out there, if consumers really understand it.”
 
http://www.moneyville.ca/article/12...-clients-offer-90-000-over-with-no-rival-bids

Stiffer bidding war rules sought as buyer offers $90,000 over asking with no rival bids

Bidding wars are emotional, stressful and can be very expensive.

By Susan Pigg | Wed Jul 04 2012

A Toronto realtor is calling for tougher rules around bidding wars after her clients were shocked to discover they’d paid $90,000 over asking for a midtown house on which theirs was the only offer.

While she eventually convinced the listing agent and the sellers to accept about half that — $45,000 over asking for the almost $1 million home — realtor Josie Stern says the incident last month is just further proof that more transparency is needed in the bidding process.

It should be mandatory for listing agents to provide potential buyers with a roster of all brokers and agents making offers on the same property — before the presentation of offers begins, says Stern, who believed there were three interested bidders.

It was only when the listing agent came back to her “10 minutes later†to say her clients’ bid had been accepted that Stern realized there was something wrong. She had been expecting a late night of bids and counter bids.

Related: Why the bidding war frenzy may be ending

“This is a call to action,†says Stern, noting the GTA market has been largely a sellers’ market since 1996. “Sixteen years of buyer abuse is enough.

“If it was mandatory for (the listing agent) to provide a list of everyone who was participating, this wouldn’t have happened.â€

In fact, the Real Estate Council of Ontario, the regulatory body for the province’s 58,000 realtors, has had such a surge in calls from those who’ve lost — or won — bidding wars, they’re now reviewing whether to urge legislative changes around the process, said Bruce Matthews, deputy registrar in charge of regulatory compliance.

Under RECO’s rules, agents must disclose how many offers there are on a property. But consumer complaints persist about so-called “phantom bids†— selling agents claiming there are numerous bids that don’t exist or never materialized.

Matthews believes that isn’t so much “a hugely prevalent problem†as a “perception†by frustrated homebuyers. (Just four agents have been disciplined for the practise over the last decade.)

That homebuyer frustration has been compounded by real estate prices that have doubled over the last decade, fuelled largely by low interest rates and not enough supply of homes on the market to keep up with demand.

This has played out in bidding wars that have escalated to sky-high levels over the last two to three years in particular, even in suburban municipalities such as Richmond Hill and Pickering.

Matthews acknowledges “there is no record-keeping requirement now with respect to offers that are not accepted,†and RECO officials are considering if that’s needed.

Related: How to win a bidding war

He stressed any bidder lists would only be used in cases where RECO officials need to launch an investigation around a sale process, and not to arm buyers with a sense of how much competition they face at the negotiating table.

Stern, a veteran agent, stresses the real estate industry has made many strides in improving consumer protection over the years, “but transparency in the transaction process is still fraught with loopholes.â€

Stern also rails against agents who “double-end†deals — acting as the listing agent and then representing a buyer who has the advantage of having an agent who knows exactly what offers have been tabled.

It should be mandatory for such listing agents to present their buyer’s offer before any of the other offers have been tabled, says Stern. That way, their buyer would be at the same disadvantage as every other bidder and forced to make the best offer they deem possible, without any insider knowledge.

She’s also suggesting listing agents who set a specific time and date for offers not be allowed to accept any beyond that time.

Too often, she says, three of four agents will be on the second round of negotitions when they find out “last minute stragglers†have been allowed to join in, often upending the whole bidding process.
 
marsh said:
In Vancouver, the seller’s market recedes
Tara Perkins, Wendy Stueck
Toronto, Vancouver — The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Jul. 04 2012, 1:37 PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Jul. 04 2012, 7:38 PM EDT

activity has dropped sharply.

Economists welcomed the decline in sales as an early sign that a correction is taking root, and said prices are likely to follow suit.
That is up nearly 35 per cent from three years ago and about 50 per cent higher than in Toronto.
While there is anecdotal evidence that foreign investors are losing their appetite for real estate in the Vancouver, experts remain perplexed as to exactly why the city is seeing such a decline in transactions right now.
Toronto’s equivalent statistics will be released on Thursday, but mid-month indicators from the city’s real estate board suggest that sales are holding relatively steady and new listings continue to rise.
“The Vancouver market is leading the Toronto market in terms of a correction,” said Toronto-Dominion Bank deputy chief economist Derek Burleton, who is calling for price declines of at least 15 per cent in both cities. “Toronto’s housing market correction is more likely to be a story of 2013, 2014.”
A decline in prices tends to lag a decline in sales by one or two quarters, Mr. Burleton said.
The average price of a home in Vancouver rose 90 per cent from 2002 to 2007, compared with 40 per cent in Toronto, according to TD.
But Toronto has seen prices increase more quickly since the financial crisis, adding to the view that Toronto is lagging its western cousin.
Vancouver’s slowdown is “striking, because nothing has really fundamentally changed in the market. It’s hard to pinpoint. Something has affected the psychology,” Mr. Burleton said.


At the same time, he has had homeowners who are looking to sell reduce their asking prices.
“Conditions are favouring buyers, which means that buyers are going to have some negotiating leverage, increased selection, and an opportunity to get better terms,” said Eugen Klein, president of Vancouver’s real estate board.
“Vancouver has had about 10 years of it being a record-setting sellers market, so it’s a change.”

A composite benchmark measure of house prices in the region suggests that prices are still higher than a year ago, but fell 0.7 per cent over the course of the month.
CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal agreed that the slowdown that’s underway in Vancouver will soon begin in Toronto.

Mr. Klein said he expected to see indications of a rush in activity prior to the changes taking effect, but hasn’t seen any so far.
“We thought that people would see a fervour of activity from people trying to get in under the line of the due date, but members haven’t been telling us that that’s the case,” he said. “So we don’t know if the information is really out there, if consumers really understand it.”
Click to expand...

^^^
I have boiled down the man points to what struck me Marsh.

The slowdown is underway in Vancouver but I find it somewhat strange that they expect the same price % declines in Vancouver as TO since Vancouver has accelerated much more and once it starts to correct (unless the foreign buyers return in droves to Vancouver) there is no reason given local conditions and salaries for Vancouver to exceed Toronto prices. this would translate into a greater drop in Vancouver.

I agree that everyone will look back and conclude in 2013-2014 that the peak was achieved in early 2012.

The final statement showing that despite new rules there has not been the rush to market of buyers tells me that we have probably tapped out those at the margin, be it end users or investors though in the case of the latter perhaps it is just as much a realization there is no money to be made at these prices rather than being "tapped out".


Anecdotally.... in the building in which I have 2 rental properties, I noticed 8 for sale and 2 for rent 3 weeks ago. They seemed to sit (the sales at least..the rentals went almost immediately) for about 4 weeks with only 1 sale but in the past 2 weeks more sold with 1 new listing....down to 4 units in a 320 unit building. So there are still sales (resale) at least in the core "for now".

I expect we will see an overall slowing but more selective buying and those poorer condos in the core of TO especially may not sell. Good things still will though perhaps at reduced prices.
 
zaius said:
She’s also suggesting listing agents who set a specific time and date for offers not be allowed to accept any beyond that time.

Too often, she says, three of four agents will be on the second round of negotiations when they find out “last minute stragglers” have been allowed to join in, often upending the whole bidding process.
Click to expand...

Any auction house I've been too (very few but more than 1) allows late comers to join in the bidding unless there was a disclosure or registration requirement due to the nature of the product (I.e. proof of a license for transporting dangerous materials, etc.)
 
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