Cliff Barron from Re/Max here with my update for Milton, Glen Williams and Georgetown for the week of February 28th to March 6th, 2021.
Before I get there, I'm going to do something different this time. Usually, I talk about what to do to your house to get more value, all that sort of stuff - yada, yada, yada. So this time, I thought, I've been in this business for 15 and a half years now. It's been a long time (almost 16) and I've done hundreds of deals. And I've been through thousands - maybe over 10,000 homes in my career. It's tough to say, you know, tough to keep track of it. But people say to me, "What's the weirdest thing you've ever experienced in real estate?" I get that all the time. So I thought - you know what? I'm going to mention them here. I'll talk about some of the weird stuff that's happened to me over the years. So here's a story:
I was selling a house, a townhouse (no it was a semi - sorry), in Milton. This was probably around 2009 or so, somewhere around there. I met with the homeowners and they were like, "Hey, Cliff, can you come in and evaluate our house?" I'm like, "Sure, no problem!" We set up the time and I show up.
When I get there, I always walk up, and I take a look at the exterior of the home and everything and kind of get an idea, mental picture of the value. When I walked up to the house, I remember thinking to myself, "boy, this is a nice house". But the problem is the house it's connected to - it was a semi - looked pretty rough. The grass was long. They had a stack of tires on their porch at the front. And all the paint was peeling off of the pillars and off the porch and everything at the front of the house. So I thought, "well, that's not a good thing because who's going to want to live next door to this?"
So anyways, I go into the house and meet with them. I go through my spiel and then a few days later, they call me up and they say, "Hey, Cliff, we'd really like you to sell our house for us." I'm like, "Oh, that's great!" So, I set the wheels in motion. I get a virtual tour, the staging, all that sort of stuff. And back then, that was unheard of, but I was ahead of the curve, which is nice. So the home lists, and it doesn't sell for about four, five, six, seven days. We're getting a lot of showings, but no offers, and my clients were like, "what's going on?" So I tell them that I honestly think it's the neighbors. But, the next thing you know, that day, we got an offer in. So we're like, "Hey, this is great. We don't have to worry about the neighbors now." Back then, you used to do home inspections because it wasn't as busy as now, and buyers did their home inspection. I think when they saw the house initially, they saw it at night. When they did the home inspection, they did it during the day. They stopped by, and they're there 3 or 4 hours. They really get a good chance to look around, and they recognize the next door neighbor. They really paid attention to it. So the agent called me the next day and said, "Hey, Cliff, I've got bad news." I'm like, "What's going on?" And she says that her clients have decided to back out. I asked her what the reason was. She said that the home inspection was fine. The financing - fine. The problem is they don't want to live next door to that.
So, the next day I had to call my clients to give them the bad news. And what we decided to do was to keep going and see what happens. We didn't adjust the price or anything like that. BUT - my client took it upon himself , the next day to get his lawnmower out. He cut his neighbor's grass. He painted the front porch for her, threw out a bunch of garbage, organized everything on the porch and completely spruced it up. Then he said to me the next day, "Can you come by and take a look?" I took a look and said, "That's great."
The next day, my client calls me in a panic, and he says, he has bad news. He tells me that his neighbor is suing him. He called the cops on him and he was charged with trespassing. He had to go to court and everything. It was just a total disaster!
So anyways, that's one of my best stories in real estate -but actually, I've got a lot. I've got tons. I'll bring you more every week. I can fill a whole book! And what's the moral of that story? He tried to approach them first, but she was a really nasty neighbor, and she was just like, get lost, leave me alone, I'm not doing anything. And the moral of the story is that you can't pick your neighbors, I guess!
So onto the sales for Milton. Busy - still busy. It's starting to slow a little bit though. I've noticed the inventory is starting to go up now. I'll log in and see 30, 40 new listings in a day, which is a lot. So we're getting to the point where we're starting to kind of level off a little bit. We're getting there. Let's see, 25 townhouses sold $864k on average, 12 semis sold for $971k on average and 31 detached sold for $1.267 on average. I think those are pretty much the same as a couple weeks ago. Hasn't really shifted up or shifted down just yet. And then condos in Milton. It's funny, you know, condos in Milton. There's an area of Milton on Main Street, 1460 Main, roughly around there. The Courtyards on Main, I think it's called. It's going crazy. Milton condos are higher than Oakville, higher than Mississauga. It makes no sense, but you know, if you live there, go for it! Let's see, 6 sales of condos $582k on average. You take that to Square One, that would be about $490k on average, maybe $510k. And then condo townhouses - 2 sales $638k on average.
Getting to Georgetown and Glen Williams. It's been busy there, too. There's a few big ones listed as well. 2 sales of townhouses $807k on average, 1 semi sold for $825k. Detached two story, there were 13 sales at $1.277. That's getting up there. I've noticed the Georgetown prices are really getting up there. They're getting equivalent to Mississauga, Milton. And then detached bungalows and split levels, there were 9 sales $867k on average. They tend to sell a little bit less because they need a bit of work over time. And if they have the nice, big lot value, that's where...I always say the value is in the dirt. People don't kind of recognize that sometimes. They think the value's in the upgrades, but after 10, 15, 20 years, those upgrades are all out of date, and it comes down to the dirt!
Any questions? Send me a PM, DM, or a phone call. I'll talk to you soon. Take care.
