Real eState

Real estate offices handling essential sales during outbreak – Sarnia Observer

Published

4 years ago

April 8, 2020

Real estate agents in the Sarnia area are still working, but it’s not business as usual.

President Donna Mathewson is shown in this file photo standing in a meeting room at the Sarnia-Lambton Real Estate Board office.

File photo / The Observer

Real estate agents in the Sarnia area are still working, but it’s not business as usual.

Donna Mathewson, president of the Sarnia-Lambton Real Estate Board, said she felt it was important to let the public know what the real estate industry has been asked to do during the restrictions imposed to slow the spread of COVID-19.

“We’re been deemed to be an essential service” to assist with “essential purchases or sales,” she said.

That designation came following consultations with the provincial real estate association and the legal community, Mathewson said.

She said examples of essential purchases and sales include court-ordered sales of houses due to separations or divorces, estate sales already in progress, sales related to job loss or transfers, foreclosure and bankruptcy, and finding new homes for buyers who had already sold their current house.

“There are certain things the government has asked us to help facilitate,” Mathewson said.

But because of the restrictions, open houses cannot be held while other ways the industry usually operates have changed.

“We’ve been deemed an essential service, but with limitations,” Mathewson said. “We have been asked to not have any in-person face-to-face contact” while dealing with essential sales, she said.

Luckily, realtors are “well positioned” to be able to use virtual and electronic tools to conduct business, Mathewson said.

“We can do a transaction safely and efficiently, all virtually.”

Mathewson said members of the board want to provide essential services while also protecting themselves and their own families during the outbreak.

“We want to make sure our clients are staying safe,” she added.

But, Mathewson said, “the government has told us it is not to be business as usual.”

The real estate board has approximately 240 members in the Sarnia area.

March sales numbers reported by the real estate board remained strong, with more than $50 million in total sales, up from the same month last year. The year-to-date sales volume was up 17 per cent so far in 2020, with a total of $131 million.

Mathewson said she wasn’t surprised March numbers remained strong, even with the start of COVID-19 restrictions.

“We would expect that impact to be seen more in April,” she said. “Houses were still moving, fairly well, right up until mid-March. That’s kind of when things started to go into lockdown mode.”

During the initial week of restrictions related to the outbreak, sales already underway were pushed along to get them completed, she said.

The Sarnia area has had a “seller’s market” with high demand and low supply of homes for the past three to four years, but Mathewson said she expects to see lower numbers in April because of COVID-19.

“We fully expect that once things can return to whatever a new normal is, we still see our market rebound and we’ll pick up where we left off,” she said.

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Real eState

Mortgage rule changes will help spark demand, but supply is ‘core’ issue: economist

Published

2 days ago

September 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.

The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.

The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.

CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.

However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.

Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.

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Real eState

National housing market in ‘holding pattern’ as buyers patient for lower rates: CREA

Published

4 days ago

September 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

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.

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Two Quebec real estate brokers suspended for using fake bids to drive up prices

Published

1 week ago

September 11, 2024

Anne Joseph

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.

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