Cliff Barron from RE/MAX here with my update for Milton, Georgetown & Glen Williams, April 4th to the 10th, 2021.

Before I get there,  I've got another short story. It's not really a story, but it's something that happened to me this week.  I met with some clients a couple of months ago and they said to me, "You know, we're thinking of selling. We want to sell around the beginning of April.  So, you know, come in and let us know what our house is worth." So I said, "Okay, that sounds good." They were a referral, which was nice - that's always good. So I go and I do my whole pitch. I show them recent sales, I give them a strategy for selling and I give them an expected list price and expected sell price. I fully told them that the way the market is right now, the strategy is to list a bit lower, to get multiple offers, and sell over the asking price. Everything went great. And then that was it. I left, and I said, "When you're ready to go, let me know." 

I called them and I followed up just after the meeting, but then didn't hear from them after about a month.  I followed up with a quick phonecall saying, "Hey, it's Cliff from RE/MAX. I'm just checking in to see how you guys are doing - if you need any advice or help with anything. Just to let you know, the market has changed a little bit - it has gone up. So, you know, we'll have to revise the pricing and everything."  And then I didn't hear back.  So  I thought that was kind of odd. 

The next week, I did the same thing.  And I didn't hear anything back. So finally, last week, after four weeks of calling once a week, I finally got hold of the potential client. I said, "Hey, it's Cliff from RE/MAX, was just wondering what's going on.  What's the scoop with your place? When are you guys are going to be ready?" And he goes, "Oh, well, I've got some news for you." And I asked, "What's that?" And he replies, "I sold my house!" I said, "Oh, wow, congratulations. What happened?" He explains, "Oh, about a month ago I had somebody knock on my door, and they offered me a really good price."  "Really?" I asked, "What did they offer you?" And he told me, and basically what they offered him was the price that I came up with two months ago, keep in mind, it's gone up since then. And they reduced all the commission, plus more commission off of that, because they assumed that I charged 5% or 6% commission. 

So the bottom line is, my client--my potential client--lost at least $50,000. I'd say maybe as much as $75,000, just by taking that offer.  By letting that person sell to them, that, "you're going to save the commission." Meanwhile, the BUYER saved the commission, NOT HIM! He didn't save anything. He lost money. The buyer had the benefit of not being in any competition with anybody. The seller had the negative effect of not being able to tell the whole world that his house was on the market. So there are people all over the GTA that had no idea he was even thinking of selling. 

So.  The moral of the story is - if somebody knocks on your door and says, "I have a buyer for your place," or "I want to buy your place" - DON'T SELL IT!. Not in this market. You're crazy to do that. Put it out there - you gotta get it out there and let people see it. And at least, get an opinion from a bunch of realtors and then go from there.  But do NOT do that. I don't know about him, about how much money that he earns, but he lost $50,000 to $70,000. If you hadn't taken a week to list the house that's $10,000 to $12,000 per day, net capital gain, no capital gains because it's a principal residence. So that's, that's incredible. That's basically a year's, maybe a year and a half, two year's salary for a lot of people, gone. Just by saying, "Okay, I'll take it because I don't want to go through three or four days of showings. And I'm going to believe this guy that I'm getting a good price. And then I'm going to save the commission."  Even if you're in a distress sale and you're like a week away from losing your house, talk to somebody first, don't just, you know, answer one of those ads that says, "We'll buy your house for cash." Why do you think they're doing that? They're doing that because they're going to flip it. They're going to make some dough off of you and some quick money, and they probably won't even take possession --because the market is so crazy. You can put it out there quickly and sell it quickly. So when somebody door knocks or sends a flyer or says, "I have a buyer for your house"... put it on the market. Put it on the market! That's my advice. 

So let's get to the sales for Milton and Georgetown and Glen Williams. Milton - busy, still busy.  I'm waiting for the average price of a detached in Milton to reach a million and a half. It's crazy. Let's see, 20 sales, $1.423M on average for detached. Those are the newer detached - the older detached in the older Milton, 7 sales, $959k on average. Townhouses, 16 sales, $878k on average. And semis, 9 sales at $940k on average. I'm waiting for semis and towns to get over $900k. And I'm waiting for semis to get over the million, which is coming, too. But who knows when? There's some new new rules coming in June. So, if you'd like to know information about that let me know. It's about the stress test, it's changing things. It might change things. So we'll see. 

Georgetown and Glen Williams April 4th to the 10th, detached, 7 of them sold for $1.404M on average, that's because there was a big one in Glen Williams that sold, I think around $2.4M, so it brought the numbers up a little bit. 1 semi sold $815k. 4 townhouses sold -the average for the townhouses were $905k because they were all the newer townhouses on Niagara Trail and Duffel, in that area, which is Georgetown South on the East side. The older ones around Seed House and Harding, they're not quite going that high. There was only 1 condo town sold. That was on Stewart McLaren for $585k. So not a lot. There's not a lot of condos, as everybody knows, condos or condo towns in Georgetown and there's zero in Glen Williams. 

And again, don't sell, if somebody knocks on your door.  Take a breath and make a few calls and inquiries first before you jump. Don't just jump. And any questions, let me know. I'll talk to you soon. Take care.