Home prices are supposed to be tanking as interest rates are rising and buyers start pulling away.
But every once in a while, homes like 821 The Queensway come up and will make you begin to question everything again.
Listed for $9,999,999, is this very average three-bedroom, two-bathroom detached house.
A bedroom upstairs.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with the house.
There’s a renovated main floor, which has been converted into offices. The floor also has a nice built-in fireplace and a powder room.
The upstairs residential unit.
Upstairs is a residential suite with a small kitchen and three decently sized bedrooms.
The backyard / parking.
There’s also a 300-square-foot patio and enough room for 12 cars to park.
The stairs.
But normally, a house like this would cost your average $1.3 million, maybe a bit more given the lot is 72 by 160 feet.
The kitchen overlooking the Harvey’s parking lot.
So what on earth is it doing listed for almost $10 million?
A bedroom.
“We are selling a freehold development opportunity with a lot of 72.01 frontage and 160 foot deep,” realtor Arta Dawkins told blogTO.
Another bedroom.
“The Queensway is known for quite a few high-rise developments. A new development fronting 821 The Queensway is just about to break the ground.”
And it makes sense that it’s being sold as a development opportunity, since no one would actually want to live in this house.
Built-in shelves upstairs.
The backyard is the Costco gas station, and its neighbours are Harvey’s and Starbucks parking lots.
Still, even if you were to build a condo building, the land isn’t worth $10 million.
The price per buildable square foot is about $123 per square foot for this area. So quick math, the land is worth just over $1.4 million.
And while it’s true that this area is getting built up with condos, and the lot is zoned for both commercial and residential, which could inflate the price, it still shouldn’t be $10 million.
One of the bathrooms.
HouseSigma, which uses AI to estimate the value of properties, estimates 821 The Queensway to be $4.8 million.
A rooftop patio.
So either this house is sitting on oil (possibly with a gas station behind it?), or it’s just absurdly overpriced. My vote is overpriced.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
MONTREAL – The Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers says Montreal-area home sales rose 9.3 per cent in August compared with the same month last year, with levels slightly higher than the historical average for this time of year.
The association says home sales in the region totalled 2,991 for the month, up from 2,737 in August 2023.
The median price for all housing types was up year-over-year, led by a six per cent increase for the price of a plex at $763,000 last month.
The median price for a single-family home rose 5.2 per cent to $590,000 and the median price for a condominium rose 4.4 per cent to $407,100.
QPAREB market analysis director Charles Brant says the strength of the Montreal resale market contrasts with declines in many other Canadian cities struggling with higher levels of household debt, lower savings and diminishing purchasing power.
Active listings for August jumped 18 per cent compared with a year earlier to 17,200, while new listings rose 1.7 per cent to 4,840.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 6, 2024.
