The Ottawa Real Estate Podcast - January 9th 2024

:: 00:39

0:00:48 Paul Stevenson: Hello and welcome to 2024. This is the Ottawa Real Estate podcast. Your go to source for all things real estate in the heart of Candace Capital. I’m Paul Stevenson, your trusted mortgage agent level two. Along my esteemed co host David Warren, also a mortgage agent, level two, and Greg Campbell, a seasoned realtor at the Campbell Merrick group. Whether you’re a first time home buyer navigating the complexities of the market or a seasoned investor looking for the latest trends, our podcast is designed to be your comprehensive guide to Ottawa’s dynamic real estate landscape.

:: 01:20

0:01:33 David Warren: Just delving into 2024.

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0:01:38 Greg Campbell: Amazing.

:: 01:38

0:01:39 Greg Campbell: Amazing.

:: 01:40

0:01:41 Greg Campbell: Feeling refreshed and motivated, as I know you are, Paul.

:: 01:46

0:01:58 Greg Campbell: One word. Yeah, that’s all I need to say. It was good.

:: 02:03

0:02:03 Paul Stevenson: David, you’re still in paradise down? Yeah, yeah.

:: 02:09

0:02:10 Paul Stevenson: There you go.

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0:02:17 Greg Campbell: We’re out of practice. I guess we usually laugh more, have more to say.

:: 02:20

0:02:22 David Warren: Well, I feel like I haven’t seen Greg in ages since we back next week show.

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0:02:30 Paul Stevenson: Yeah.

:: 02:31

0:02:42 Paul Stevenson: Was.

:: 02:42

0:02:44 Paul Stevenson: Oh, it’s going around. It’s going around. It’s coming around.

:: 02:47

0:02:47 Paul Stevenson: My youngest had a fever for about five days of, like, 30. Ranged from 38 to 39 and a half. Up and down. Just kind of a roller coaster. No other symptoms, just a huge fever. And now he’s completely fine.

:: 03:01

0:03:17 Paul Stevenson: He’s back. He’s back. My background has changed. No more brick. I’m onto the brand colored soundproofing squares and very happy in my new office near train yards, which I’m excited about. Fresh start here in 2024, and I think my sound quality be better here without the echoes and the lighting. I have to say, I don’t look as ghostly here.

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0:03:46 Paul Stevenson: Yeah, thank you. You always look great, though. Thank you, Greg. Yeah, you’re welcome, guys. So what’s new? What’s the year looking like so far? What are you guys seeing? We’re eight days in. What’s happening?

:: 03:58

0:04:26 Greg Campbell: Sorry. Two were looking to upgrade, and one is looking to sell their property. So they asked me to actually stop by and give them an evaluation. Yeah, they were just checking the market, seeing what was available, at what price. So, yeah, things are happening. Things are moving. As we’ve said, we have a strong feeling for this spring.

:: 04:47

0:05:23 Paul Stevenson: Throw in your conditions, you can negotiate your price. A lot of sellers, the most recent one I had, the buyer said we knew a realtor, told us the sellers had to sell and they drove the price down. They had that leverage. They say, okay, they have to sell, let’s drive it down five grand. And they did and they accepted. And so I think it’s still a really good opportunity for buyers right now at least being early January, to get in there and set your closing for April. May, like, you don’t have to close in the next ten days, but just get in there, get the house you want now for the price you want, and then in May when prices are up 5%, you can thank us, but.

:: 06:04

0:06:05 Paul Stevenson: Yeah, but no, the conditional offers seem to be very comfortable now, which is great to see.

:: 06:12

0:06:26 Paul Stevenson: They’re competing on this client.

:: 06:27

0:07:28 Paul Stevenson: Yeah, and I would say too in the conversations that I’ve had, and I’m sure you’re saying the same thing, David, people are now inquiring about variable. Last year it was not even an option. Like we’re not going variable, we want static payments now. People are understanding, I think, and we said this last year, clients are very informed now they come to us, they understand what’s know. We give them a couple extra points that maybe we had an insider knowledge on that. Maybe they didn’t in the article or a couple of articles they read.

:: 07:55

0:08:26 Paul Stevenson: So anything can happen as we saw the last three years. But I’m still optimistic and hopeful. And I’m telling my clients this, obviously, other than Greg, no one has a crystal ball, but we’re hopeful. I think we’re going to see rates go down, fixed rates already down. There’s some lenders are under 5% now. Four nine nine is kind of that golden rate right now. But most lenders are sitting kind of in the low fives.

:: 08:47

0:08:55 David Warren: Yeah, it was interesting from an economic standpoint that in December in Canada, we lost 23,500 full time jobs, but added 23,600 part time jobs. So a lot of full time jobs lost and only part time added. But the flip side of that is that we also added a huge population. From an immigration standpoint, we added we’re averaging about 40 to 60,000 newcomers a month. So kind of where that losing all those full time and only adding those part time, that’s pretty bad from a very weak employment numbers. So people were expecting with such negative news in the employment sector last week, we’re expecting the bond market to drop. It actually went the other way and bumped up slightly, but that’s because the US numbers blew past expectations which jumped there.

:: 10:04

0:10:49 Paul Stevenson: Yeah. So I’ll give a rundown of the dates for this year so everyone can mark their calendars. January 24 is the first. March 6, April 10, June 5, July 24, September 4, October 23, December 11. There you go. Big news coming. So based on that, I’m going to guess we’re going to anticipate June, but I’m going to say July 24 will be the first rate drop.

:: 11:23

0:11:27 Paul Stevenson: Let’s go. Yeah, that’s good.

:: 11:29

0:11:40 Paul Stevenson: Well, let’s say like it’s truth.

:: 11:43

0:11:45 Paul Stevenson: Yeah.

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0:12:18 Greg Campbell: Over 500,000 come in and then almost 500,000 leave. That’s crazy. What does that look like? I just want to know who.

:: 12:25

0:12:27 Greg Campbell: What’s the demographic? Right.

:: 12:31

0:13:09 Greg Campbell: It also doesn’t make for a good headline. Either.

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0:13:28 Greg Campbell: Yeah, I actually don’t have that chart in front of me.

:: 13:30

0:13:31 Greg Campbell: Is there anyone else that could look at that right now?

:: 13:34

0:14:20 Paul Stevenson: And the only year that was worse was in 2020. And then lastly, months of inventory. Right now we’re sitting, or at least in December for the year. We are sitting at year to date, 2.4 months of inventory, which is reasonable. Yeah. Balance market is what, three to four? Yeah. So we’re getting there. That’s going to happen. We’re going to hit three months. Market is going to explode. It’s going to go back down to six weeks, one month.

:: 14:54

0:15:00 Paul Stevenson: Yeah. Especially with how long things are sitting. With over 30 days sitting on average days on market, it seems like that inventory would kind of grow exponentially.

:: 15:08

0:15:26 Paul Stevenson: It seems very low. 34 actually, for December.

:: 15:30

0:15:44 David Warren: Lot of interest.

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0:15:48 David Warren: Let’s delve in.

:: 15:49

0:16:27 Greg Campbell: So I’m going through something right now where I thought that this was all sorted and it wasn’t, and we got an offer and then they asked, my seller asked to change the closing date because probate wasn’t done yet. So I’m like, okay, put me in touch with the lawyer. It was good because I know the lawyer and we had a call and what happened was they’re signing off on this today and it generally takes four to eight weeks to get everything sorted.

:: 17:00

0:17:34 Greg Campbell: I think this clause is extra important to have in place so that if anything does come up, you’re covered, everybody’s covered and everybody’s aware of what’s going on. So it would be something like this. The buyer and seller agree that the seller, upon giving a minimum of seven days written notice to the buyer, excluding Saturday, Sunday or statutory holidays, may unilaterally extend the date set for completion not to exceed 14 days in total for the purpose of obtaining a certificate of appointment of estate trustee.

:: 18:04

0:18:35 Greg Campbell: But when you find yourself in a situation, know that there is a way out and a way to still market and promote the property and get things done with this in place. So I just went through this. It’s just kind of fresh in my mind as of Friday. So it was just something I wanted to share with everybody so that they’re aware of probate.

:: 18:55

0:18:57 Greg Campbell: So it’s cleaned up, and everything’s good.

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0:19:51 Paul Stevenson: It was the first time I had encountered a non probated estate, especially of that size. Typically, there’s a lawyer involved when that stuff happens, but there’s a lot of.

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0:20:41 Paul Stevenson: On the flip side, I actually had. So when you list a property, assuming not the house I’m in now, but the home I bought previous to this one was actually from the estate of whoever the woman’s name was. But is that something like, what would be the difference then? That is something that went to probate, and now they’re selling it through the estate. What is the difference? Yeah.

:: 21:03

0:21:21 Paul Stevenson: Right.

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0:21:33 David Warren: What’s the process for listing a property like that? Are you verifying with a lawyer as a listing agent? How are you even vetting that they are able to sell it, whoever is coming to you to sell that property?

:: 21:47

0:22:13 Greg Campbell: You meet down, you kind of say, is everything in order? And what do I need? Who’s signing? Are you authorized? Then a follow up call with the lawyer just guaranteeing or confirming everything and that’s it.

:: 22:24

0:22:25 Greg Campbell: It’s pretty basic, but you just got to cover your bases, obviously, so that there’s no mistakes because sometimes it’ll come back. You might need a different signature, you might have to change something. So it’s better to just do your due diligence and get it sorted right away.

:: 22:43

0:22:47 Greg Campbell: Oh man. Predictions.

:: 22:49

0:23:13 Greg Campbell: I’ll go first. I think nothing is going to change as of now. I think the prices and the amount of sales is going to be exactly the same as last year within whatever.

:: 23:31

0:23:55 Paul Stevenson: I think is the last year is just under twelve.

:: 23:58

0:24:11 Paul Stevenson: Okay, well, I’m going to jump on ship with you guys. I’m going to say somewhere in the middle of last year and the average. So I’m going to say 16,000 transactions and price increase. I like 5%. I’m going to say nice, easy, slow, gradual increase, which isn’t that slow, but 5%, 5% increase in values.

:: 24:30

0:24:38 Paul Stevenson: For.

:: 24:38

0:24:41 Paul Stevenson: Now, here’s a question. I do have a question for the listeners. What do you think? What do you think?

:: 24:47

0:25:24 Paul Stevenson: Yeah, I think fixed rates are going to come down again in the first couple of months. So I think the two busiest months this year are going to be. I think August will be busy, as you said, Greg. So October closings kind know July August purchases. And then I also think we’re going to see a lot of kind of February march purchases. So probably may June closings. So I think as far as actual closings, probably May and October will be the busiest. But I think for transactions, probably February, March and August will be the busy months this year.

:: 25:55

0:26:11 David Warren: Yeah, because I haven’t seen any headlines or articles talking about the fact that fixed rates have come down. Even for the big banks, there hasn’t been that positive news that they’ve come down basically a full percent in the last few months. So with that being out of the news cycle and it only being like when there’s been an increase, when there is any sort of talk of rates coming down and make that public for those that are sitting on the sidelines that haven’t been really paying attention too much and kind of only looking at headlines that that’s going to get them back in the market. And I think, to your point, it’s going to be really that psychological just news cycle that really gets people kind of going.

:: 26:57

0:27:02 David Warren: Well, we shall see. We shall see. Steven, timestamp those predictions.

:: 27:07

0:27:09 Greg Campbell: Put them in the vault.

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0:27:14 David Warren: Let’s do it.

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0:27:52 Greg Campbell: Hats off.

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0:28:26 Paul Stevenson: Make sure to subscribe, comment, review, and thanks for listening. We’ll see you soon. Deuces later.

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