Cliff Barron from RE/MAX here with my update for Milton, Georgetown & Glen Williams for April 11th through the 17th, 2021. 

Before I get there, I'd like to talk about another thing that I've been thinking about - bidding wars on houses right now. There's a lot of talk right now about opening up the bidding and making it more transparent. Presently, when you put an offer on a property you can't divulge anything about that offer so it's kind of a blind bidding process.  Now they want to open it up - they're thinking about it. It's a possibility to kind of cool the market. So, let me tell you what happens:

If I list a house for say $900,000 and it's under listed, you know, we predict it's going to sell over the asking price because that's the way every single house is selling right now. So, the strategy is not to list it for $1.1M and try and bring it down from there because buyers naturally will start thinking if you're listed for $1.1M, you want $1.2 or over the asking price. So, you list it for $900,000 and you hold off the offer date until, say, Tuesday at 6:00 pm. You put it on the listing that offers are to be registered by 4:00 pm and presented at 6:00 pm Tuesday night. So, what happens is that Tuesday during the day offers come in and (there are no actual physical offers coming in usually 'til later in the day). Most agents will just put in what's called the 801 which basically says that their clients have signed an offer but they haven't sent the offer to the listing agent yet, but they intend to send it to you later in the day. So, as the day goes on, the offers go up - 2, 4, 6, 8. I've done some where there's 20 offers, believe it or not. We're asking $900,000 on the house and at 6:00 pm, we have 8 offers in, at 7:00 pm, we have 12 offers in (which is after the deadline, but you know, the deadline doesn't seem to mean anything!) And then sure enough, by about 9:00, it starts to fizzle out finally and then you get maybe 1 or 2 last offers in. So, what happens is that you go through the offers you received.  You're asking $900,000, you get a bunch of offers that say $980k, $960k, you might actually get one under the asking price, which is crazy, and then you might get - I've seen it before - where it's like, there's a few at $1.15M, $1.125M and then there's 1 at $1.2M or $1.125M, basically $75-$100,000 over the next one. 

So, the thought is - THAT'S NOT FAIR. That's what people are saying - it's not fair. They should be able to know what the other offers are - I get it. You know, from a seller's point of view, the seller is like, "no, no, no, no, no, I want to keep it this way because I'm doing great", but the buyer's point of view is, "it's not fair". So, I don't know, from a logistic point of view, holding off an offer date and then disclosing the the dollar amount to everybody who's offered as the current setup of how offers work - it wouldn't work - there's no way.  It would be just a flurry of offers at the last five minutes and the phone would be just ringing and ringing and ringing. There's no way you could keep up with it. So, I don't think that would work, but the theory is it will slow the market.  It will too, for sure, because what happens is, that listing that I was talking about, if I listed for $900k and I get that blow away offer that comes in at $1.2M and everybody else is at around $1.1M, it's going to sell. It's going to sell firm at $1.2M and the next thing you know, the next house on the street a few doors down will list in about 2 to 3 weeks and they're going to list it at $1.05M or $1.1M with the thought that they're going to sell for even more than $1.2M. So, what it's doing is just ramping up the prices.  The prices are going up and up and up and it's creating kind of like a false demand in a way. 

As it is now, it would have to be logistically figured out, because the current way of dealing with offers, it just wouldn't work. Also, if you buy a house, you get in the bidding process, and you're like, this is not fair, this is not fair, and then when you go to sell the house, you're like this is not fair, this is not fair. Now I have to do the open bidding and show everybody the price, that's not fair. And then, if the market slows down, (which it will), it will affect the market for sure.  You have to think, right now we can't disclose anything about an offer. So, we can have a house on the market for a month and have an offer come in that's just a really low offer and we turn it down and then, three weeks later another offer comes in and the agent says, "Have you had any offers yet?" and it's like, "yep, yeah, I've got an offer in." "Really? What did they offer?" It's like, "well, we can't disclose what they offered right now, but I can tell you my clients were interested, but they didn't go for it." So, you can kind of hint a little bit here and there but you can't say anything. But with the new rules, if they did bring in disclosing the amounts, then all of a sudden you have to tell these people exactly what they offered and they'd be like, "oh, I don't know, that's it, eh? So, if they offered that, then maybe I'm going to just offer a low amount, too." It's going to be tough. 

So, if you've got any thoughts on it, let me know, because it's up for debate. There are pros and cons to both sides of it and if it comes in, it comes in - it's just part of life. Then we will just have to deal with it and just follow whatever rules we have to follow.  So, any comments, let me know. It's an interesting topic, to be honest. From a buyer's point of view, it sucks when the offers aren't disclosed but from a seller's point of view they love it because you sell for more. 

Anyways, getting to the sales for April 11th to the 17th for Milton. 37 detached homes, $1.336M on average. There was a big one that sold at Syndenham for over $2M, $2.2M, believe it or not, and had over a 100 showings. Crazy, but it was an extremely special property. And then we had 10 semis sold, $932k on average, 24 townhouses, $836k on average. Then, in the old part of Milton, there was only 1 sale, $1.025M. 

Then we get to Georgetown and Glen Williams.  There were a few big ones that sold this week in Georgetown. In Glen Williams, there was 1 big one that sold. So, the older detached we had 4 of them sell, $944k. The larger, newer detached, $1.32M was the average, 11 sales. And 1 semi and 2 townhouses sold. The semi was $862k. The towns were $736k - a little bit smaller towns. And then there was actually 1 condo and 1 condo/townhouse in Georgetown, $590k for the condo, $520k for the condo/townhouse. And in Milton $612k for condo sales. So, that's impressive. That's higher than it's ever been. And condo/towns, $685k, 10 of each. 

So, things are still moving along but we'll see how things shape up in the future. It's gonna be really interesting to see how things are going to work with this bidding. And like I said, if you have any comments, let me know!

I'll talk to you guys soon. Take care.