Where do you think the market is headed?

market

Two questions from the chat widget

This year, is not as crazy as last year. It’s still crazy, just a different kind of crazy. With such a shortage of homes to buy and with the equity-reducing uncertainties of the GTA market, I for one am not as busy as I was last spring. Spring? What spring. We are off to a late start of the spring season this year. A mid-month two-day ice storm was ‘historic’. Most sellers if they can, wait until the grass is green and garden looks good before listing. That came late.

Anyway that is a long preamble to get where I’m going —> the chat widget. When I’m at my desk, or in my car, when I’m shopping at the Home Depot and when I’ve reading a novel or watching a movie on Netflix, this year I’ve been keeping the chat widget on my website open and as such visitors have been engaging. That’s nice. That’s the whole idea. Engagement. 

The same general questions seem to be coming up again and again. So why not a blog post to answer what’s on a lot of peoples’ minds. Here are two:

Q: Where do you think the market is headed?

A: We are headed for balance and more traditional price growth but we have to get through this lack of inventory first. We have a backlog of buyers who want to buy, especially in the price ranges under $550,000. We always talk about “the market” like it is one big thing but it is probably better to think of it like a supermarket where you have dairy, produce, meat…in the real estate market you’ve got condo apartments, townhouses (freehold and condo), single family homes… downtown, uptown, Laurelwood, backing onto green space…And you’ve got relocators, first time homebuyers, the ‘move up” market, downsizers, investors…If you are paying attention, you’ll know that different segments of the real estate market are behaving differently, some are hyper-competitive. Some are balanced or balancing.

Q: What is the most undervalued area in Kitchener Waterloo?

marketA: In February and March of this year, clients I am working with were most interested in Kitchener core neighbourhoods. There we saw homes that were priced fairly accurately (not 10% under what they should be) go for double digit amounts over asking price. It seems like ground zero for a lot of buyers is King and Victoria. This is because of the LRT, the train to Toronto, Google, the Tannery and other downtown Kitchener high-tech businesses. 

The one thing we can take from that list and expand upon is the LRT . There are two neighbourhoods with LRT stops not in Kitchener Waterloo’s core areas that I think are undervalued. Those are:

The neighbourhood close to Northfield Landing Station 

The neighbourhood behind Fairview Park Mall (Kingsdale) and the second to last stop on the LRT (Block line).

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