Full steam ahead… Sales are up 20% this week over last and listings down. The market feels like someone is putting gasoline on a forest fire. Even in the crazy market, supply gets smaller and demand continues to increase meaning if you're a buyer; things are going to continue to get worse before they get better.

Only 8 of the 41 sales this week sold UNDER the asking price. Yep, you read that right, all the other sales were over asking price, and not just over asking, we saw some huge $ over listing price this week. 80% of the deals were bidding wars this week, which is just beyond crazy. It’s the highest % we have seen since I’ve tracked the number almost a year ago.

We keep thinking that the number of listings is so low that it can only go higher… Well, that’s not happening... at least for the moment. We are down almost another 6% of total listings available in the market this week. I did the math when I took out the new construction from these numbers (which a few of them sold this week, more on that later); and we are still down to 70 total listings in all of Sudbury.

Speaking of new construction - You may remember my take away from a few weeks ago, where I showed some frustration and shock at the MASSIVE increase in prices; yea those ones in Lively. One of the bungalows that was listed just one year ago at 529k and didn’t sell (it increased a few times from 530k, to 540k, then expired at 560k). Well, that one just hit the hot sheets sold firm this week, not just at the 630k new revised sale price but with whatever extras and finishes the buyers asked for it sold firm for 680k. Just a small 150k increase from the advertised price 12 months ago.

It seems more times every week, I get more and more calls from Real Estate Agents driving up from Southern Ontario, calling me in front of a property telling me they have clients in their car and want to get into our listing. With Toronto buyers, come Toronto money and pushing our prices higher and higher. If the trend of buyers switching their home town from the ‘6’ to our local ‘Sudbury 5’; the number of new buyers who are entering the market will continue to increase pushing prices to the extreme.

We are in a wild time in the market. There are 2 outcomes that I can foresee happening. Post-lockdown and the spring-market that is coming will boost listings, giving buyers a few more options and taking some wind from the sails of the crazy market. The second scenario being that Southern buyers continue to see Sudbury as our real estate is on a half-price sale; competing with the locals to find their next home, all the while increasing demand and pushing prices higher. Only time will tell if we choose the red pill or the blue.

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This week saw the everyday trader rise up and ‘take the power back’ against the big corporate hedge funds. All starting in a public chat room on Reddit with the message boards describing the best way to rise up and save a dying video game company. The play to drive the stock price up was in retaliation to larger hedge funds placing massive bets on the stock going down; which would have happened if it wasn’t for the Reddit Keyboard warriors jumping in.

What a week, it seems so 2020/2021 for the internet to rise up and put the screw to the hedge fund managers. It shows the power of an online mob. What jumps out to me is now more than ever is, buying stocks (specifically individual stocks) is truly gambling. Even if you invest with strong fundamentals, it may have nothing to do with the stock price.

What does this have to do with real estate? I think it highlights the fact that even in a marketplace where house prices have skyrocketed, homes are a much safer investment. You can’t live in your stock portfolio but you do need a roof over your head.

On a local level, things aren’t great. It seems like every day brings a new school with a COVID outbreak. In the last 7 days there were 72 new cases; 10 of which are active, 5 in schools, 3 in long-term care homes, and one in a retirement home.

From a real estate perspective, we are seeing sales equal to what they were last week but the biggest shift was the decrease in conditional deals; there was a boost in sales this week by about 20%.

Tune in for this week's 5 biggest takeaways on Sudbury's marketplace! 🎧

We are 2 weeks into the shutdown, and in a best case scenario, we are sitting with 3 weeks left. I find myself wondering what it was like to be able to go into a hardware store and pick out my own lumber or paint. With a lot of sellers delaying any thought of getting their home on the market until after the most recent shutdown, things are likely going to get worse for buyers in the market before they get better. 😓

Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock - Your local real estate podcast!

We are 2 weeks into 2021 and the wild ride that 2020 took us on seems to be continuing. The entire province is under a complete shut down (minus, Costco, Walmart, LCBO, Beer Store, Schools, etc…) but hey, I’m not complaining.

In the province, we are seeing cases in the mid-3000’s per day, and the prediction is if we continue with the current rate of the spread in the next 4 weeks we could be seeing 10k cases a day! As I sit here in my office, masked up and a big bottle of sanitizer next to me; I feel alone, with all staff and agents working from their homes. I just hopped off a team zoom call and am having deja-vu of March of 2020 when COVID first began.

From a real estate perspective, we are seeing listings and sales about equal this week but I feel that the numbers don’t do justice to what we are actually experiencing in the market...

Tune in and have a listen to my 5 biggest takeaways on Sudbury's real estate market this week! 

Don't forget to like & subscribe! If today's episode stood out to you, let's chat! Send us a message on socials!

Happy Friday!

Wow, here we are 2021! As we turn the page to a brand new year, it's been a crazy first 7 days, especially for our neighbours south of the border. With Trump being removed from office; and his loyalists storming the cabinet; needless to say, it was quite the week.

Here on a local level, we have just recently extended our lockdown, the glimmer of hope is that schools announced that things will be going back to in-class learning for kids as of Monday. Wow, it's been a busy week trying to play parent/teacher to an SK and a grade 2 student who are sitting at an iPad all day long.

From a real estate perspective, I know I’ve taken a few weeks off my weekly update but I hope you and your family had a relaxing holiday. We have started the year with more listings than sales (although there are 6 of the 21 listings that are re-lists of new construction homes), but multiple offers are still a thing that’s stayed strong into 2021!

My 5 takeaways this week are:

I hope you guys had the best holiday possible. I know it was different with family members restricted and virtual visits over zoom. For myself it was truly unbelievable, I felt relaxed calm and was able to take some time to enjoy the family time. Living on the lake, we were able to have the backyard rink set up; and it seems like every lake in Sudbury has a skating path set up with multiple rinks, it is truly amazing to see Sudburians enjoying the outdoors.

Wishing you all the best in the coming year and we’ll chat next week!

Happy Monday and welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock - your local real estate podcast! If you listened to our last episode, 2020 RECAP Predictions and Prices, you knew today's episode was on queue! David Kurt and Tristan are on the mic to share their three BIG BOLD PREDICTIONS for 2021!

As it's almost time to say goodbye to 2020, we welcome YOU back to the very last episode of Selling the Rock until the New Year! Tristan and Dave are excited about this one - it's time for the Annual Wrap Up! 

Last year, we sat down in December of 2019 and shared  our 3 BIG BOLD PREDICTIONS for 2020...today we will be returning to these predictions to see if any of them panned out this year! 👀 We will also be recapping the housing market in general - what happened in the year of 2020. I know many of you have been following David's 5 Bullet Fridays, which provide weekly Sudbury market updates...but man it was truly a crazy year! 🏡

First of all, we are in a Global Pandemic - which has definitely taken us for a shock and threw a curve in our whole year...and as we sit here we are in the midst of another province wide lockdown. It's starting to seem like this isn't going to end; Deja Vu.

All right, Here we go - Join us as we revisit our Big Bold Predictions for 2020! 😂

Dave's Predictions 🔮

1. 2020 would steer away from a balanced marketplace, turning into a seller's market

2. We would enter the gig economy and would embrace the Airbnb lifestyle

3. Nickel prices were going to be soaring high

2. 2020 would entail a lot less buyers and fewer sales

3. Fewer sellers in general

We are wishing you a wonderful New Years Eve! Here's to a safe, happy, healthy year of moving forward! 

Happy holidays...and welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock! This episode is EXTRA special...

It's our 2 year anniversary in the business! It took a lot longer than two years in thought and process to build what we've got here, but we've opened our doors for business just at the end of December in 2018!

Reflecting back on the idea of a brokerage, what was important to me at the time was creating, establishing and growing something from scratch. The idea of building something that my kids could point to one day and say, "Look what Dad did"...the idea of legacy played a huge role in the behind the scenes of what I've done.

2019 was an okay year. Our sales were basically flat year over year. We had some highs...and some lows. I remember reflecting on why our team hadn't grown in size and why our sales were the same year over year. Lake City Realty wasn't growing the way I had imagined. I thought that if I built something, people would just start approaching me saying, "Dave, I'm interested in joining your brokerage." Clearly that wasn't happening. As we rounded out 2019, we really dove into creating content. This podcast, Selling the Rock really fired away!

Shortly into 2020, we found ourselves in a big global pandemic. Everything was closing around us, leaving me with the uncertainty of how we would continue to function, grow and survive. I still remember wondering if I'd be able to sell another home in 2020. The government just announced another round of Province wide shut down...sure it's going to be a little bit less in the North, but it's another two week's where nothing can go on. Rounding into 2021...we have some interesting times ahead.

2020 was also a great year for our business - we grew in sales at about 5% and we did about 165 deals this year...which is fantastic! That's an increase of almost 10% year over year. We doubled the size of our team! The idea that if I built something, 'they' would come turned into more than an idea! Lake City Realty started with myself, Mike, Tristan and my Dad! This year we've had Kelly - my sister, Jennifer Brouillette and Chad Moore join our family!

The Content...we had done some content and started this podcast in November of last year, but the contents been on fire this year! One of my goals was to hire someone focused on content development and a media expert and we were able to find the perfect fit! 

Circling back, we wanted to build a real estate brand for the future - we know that consumers are looking for something different in 2030. We don't want to be the Kodaks of the world...I read the other day that Kodak developed the first digital camera 25 years before anybody else had developed one but they didn't put it out in the world because they didn't want to cannibalize their traditional sales. I think with me, I always want to push the boundaries and build the business that's going to succeed in 5, 10, 15, 25 years from now. 

So that's a little bit of a summary of what's gone on behind the scenes in 2020. We survived a global pandemic - so far. I can't be more blessed for the team I have around me! 

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to my podcast and for the continued support from the community and from family and friends! 

Til' Next Time!

Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock! We've got David Kurt and Chad Moore on the mic today to chat about the week! From a real estate perspective listings stayed pretty consistent week over week with last week, as we find ourselves in this pre-christmas lul; and sales actually stayed pretty strong outpacing new listings again this week by close to a third.

The listings and sales were about consistent with last week. We had chatted with getting to a point where we would hit the lul as we head into the Holidays and it appears this could be the numbers we are seeing hold as the slow market. If this does hold true, it could be a pretty strong holiday season. Compared to the the activity last year at this time we actually saw 28 sales during this same week 2019; which means we are busier than last years market as well.

The most surpising number this week is the number of active/pending sales. We saw a huge drop last week when we hit just 6 total deals that were pending and this week we launch that number back up to 20. This is a good sign for # of sales as we head into next week. One of the reasons we’ve pointed to the market continuing to be strong is the nicer weather, and despite headed to a snow storm apparently for Saturday; buyers are still seeming to be pounding the pavement looking for that perfect place before Christmas!

The number of multiple offers stayed really consistent this week again with closer to 50% of the sales being close to asking or above asking price. This has continued for the last few weeks, and it is interesting to think that even with the winter market upon us that their are homes that buyers are willing to get into a bidding frenzy over. The other interesting part of this is the value the sellers are putting on ‘cash’ offers. 

David was on a zoom meeting with some Realtors® this week and they were discussing the entry level market in Sudbury and the comment was made that soon enough there will be no listings under 300k; especially within the city. As he was preparing to show a buyer this weekend he saw this exact scenario playing out. Typically the discussion goes like this, “we want a house that doesn’t need too much work, we are ok doing cosmetics and we’d prefer to be in town, and no we won’t do a semi-detached”. There are a few listings that are priced just under the 300k but these prices are artificial with the likelihood that they will sell for a good chunk over the 300k price point.

We're having the conversations with people multiple times a day it appears; questioning if this winter dip is the start of a market cool down in general or will prices continue to go up. We don’t have the crystal ball and can’t predict the future. The biggest reasons for prices to continue to be stronger and quite a bit stronger next year are; it doesn’t appear that the supply will massively increase any time soon, rates will be remaining low for the foreseeable future which makes lending cheap, our properties may seem expensive to those who bought 5 or 10 years ago but to those people in Southern Ontario who are looking at coming north to enjoy this work-from-home shift we’ve become accustomed to it looks like our homes are on sale. The reasons that the market may have peaked include; the fact the government has artificially put rates as low as they can get them, they can’t go lower (house prices are typically inversely tied to lending rates), sure there are some buyers coming up from down south, but most of the buyers who wanted to escape their COVID-condos did so at the start of the pandemic, and people who have been financially hurt by COVID have been able to coast with CERB and deferring mortgages, 2021 will be the first time the government may not be there to stop the bleed.

Tune in for the whole week speel and let us know what your thoughts are! Til Next Week!

Welcome back to another episode of Selling the Rock - Your local real estate podcast! 

From a local perspective, it was a winning week for 2 nurses who hit the jackpot last week in HSN’s 50/50 draw. The draw hit the biggest prize yet of over $200k. These two young nurses bought a few tickets to celebrate a recent promotion. This should make for a Merry Christmas for their families for sure! On another note, the City is opening up public skating which I know me and my family are excited to get out for. As a COVID-twist, you have to book your session on the rink (which can be done at this link here). I’m excited to build an outdoor rink on the lake again this year for the kids but this should fill the gap until the ice is safe to get that started. 

From a real estate perspective, listings continued at extreme lows for the week, which is reasonable given Christmas is around the corner. While sales dropped from last week they still outpaced new listings by quite a bit. 

Want the insider scoop on this week's 5 biggest takeaways as we enter the December market? TUNE IN!