Real estate is emotional. Why? Because a home is more than walls and a roof, it’s a container for our lives, our families, our communities. As part of an occasional series, we’ve asked local writers to share their stories on real estate and housing.
The first sign was the decrease in the number of showings on our listings. Around mid-April, just after the Bank of Canada increased the prime interest rate by 0.5 per cent — the largest increase in 22 years — I listed a condo in the Upper Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto for $649,000, an entry level price that during the last few years would have attracted dozens of showings and multiple bids on offer night.
We were now starting to see many homes not selling on offer night. Sometimes it was because no offers came in. On some occasions the properties received offers but the prices didn’t meet the sellers’ expectations and were all refused. This happened on a property that my team member Jenn Scaife sold to her client. The purchase price was $750,000 in March, but when the home was appraised just before the closing in June, it came in at only $620,000. This left the buyers scrambling to come up with a larger down payment and our mortgage agent being very creative in presenting a new scenario to the lender. The sellers, who had insisted on the long closing, also agreed to reduce the purchase price to make the deal happen.
However, there are some cases where homes are getting multiple offers and selling for more than asking. It depends on the house and neighbourhood, and it’s more of the exception now, not the rule.
You mean like a normal sales process