REDISCOVER REAL ESTATE

Broker launches program to provide clarity around bidding wars

With regulations around bidding wars about to change, one broker has developed a piece of technology aimed to revolutionize the real estate industry and make the home buying process much more transparent.

DealDock allows real estate agents to register every bid made on a property, while the bidders will be given access to each of the bids made to ensure a fair process. “The buying agent and the consumer upload the offer, it’s time stamped and locks it in the system," Drew Donaldson, executive vice president of SafeBridge Financial and co-founder of DealDocket told CREW's sister website MortgageBrokerNews.ca.

 "Once the offers are done, the selling agent can sit with their sellers to discuss the offers. Afterward, everyone that registered an offer can actually have access to the system and see everything; they can see when it was opened and when [each offer] came in.”
Donaldson and Adam Brind, a Toronto-based real estate agent, conceived of the idea after seeing too many clients lose out in bidding wars.

“It wasn’t that they lost, it was that they didn’t know what happened,” Donaldson said. “They didn’t know if it was fair; there was no real regulation on it – Realtors are emailing back and forth offers to purchase and there was a huge lack of transparency.”

The technology was also a response to pending regulations.

“On July 1st, 2015, the Real Estate Council of Ontario will officially adopt changes to REBBA 2002 (the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act) which will require that real estate brokerages retain a copy of every offer on a property in order to prevent fake offers,” DealDocket explained in an official release
The platform is set to be launched in Ontario with plans to launch Canada-wide within the next month.
It boasts bank-level encryption and the eventual goal, according to Donaldson, is to have a DealDocket number on every MLS listing.

“It benefits everyone: the real estate agent, the buyer, the seller, the regulator,” Donaldson said. “There is more compliance and, honestly, it’s a win on every level.”

Some of the program’s features include:

• Timestamps on all incoming offers
• Full disclosure in multiple representation situations
• An auto summary of all offers
• A standardization of the multiple-offer process

Source: Canadian real Estate Wealth

Looking to buy, sell or refinance? Know your options. I can help! Direct line: 416-219-6662

 

Get ready for a new round of speculation of a Canadian housing crash.

The Canadian housing market’s continued strength was on display again Friday, but news that prices are rising on a national level is sure to drive a new round of crash speculation.

The Canadian Real Estate Association said prices were up 6.3% nationally from a year ago to a record $431,812 in February. Even using the Multiple Listing Service home price index, which is supposed to smooth out extremes, prices were up 5% from a year ago.

Rising home values tend to set off alarm bells among those calling for a correction — count the International Monetary Fund as a backer of that theory. The IMF said this week pri

The Canadian housing market’s continued strength was on display again Friday, but news that prices are rising on a national level is sure to drive a new round of crash speculation.

The Canadian Real Estate Association said prices were up 6.3% nationally from a year ago to a record $431,812 in February. Even using the Multiple Listing Service home price index, which is supposed to smooth out extremes, prices were up 5% from a year ago.

Rising home values tend to set off alarm bells among those calling for a correction — count the International Monetary Fund as a backer of that theory. The IMF said this week prices were up 60% during the past 15 years, on an inflation-adjusted basis, and the group is sticking with a call that prices could correct anywhere from 7% to 20%.

But Gregory Klump, chief economist with CREA, said the average national price is not a very good barometer for what is happening in the market because the growth in sales in Toronto and Vancouver tends to skew the market.

ces were up 60% during the past 15 years, on an inflation-adjusted basis, and the group is sticking with a call that prices could correct anywhere from 7% to 20%.

But Gregory Klump, chief economist with CREA, said the average national price is not a very good barometer for what is happening in the market because the growth in sales in Toronto and Vancouver tends to skew the market. Read full article >>

Garry Marr | March 13, 2015 Financial Post

Looking to buy, sell or refinance? Know your options. I can help! Direct line: 416-219-6662

 

 

Average price of Toronto detached home shoots past $1 million

Home sales in February were surprisingly hot — even in the face of record-low temperatures — as sales climbed 11.3 per cent over the same period a year ago, and so did prices, with the average detached in the City of Toronto exceeding the $1 million mark.

Prices for all housing types — from condos to detached homes — were up 7.8 per cent in February across the GTA, bringing the average sales price to $596,193, according to figures released by the Toronto Real Estate Board Wednesday.

But detached homes in the 416 region remained in particularly high demand.

Sales were up a stunning 16.9 per cent, year over year and prices continued to climb into the stratosphere. While the average sale price for a detached in the City of Toronto briefly touched on $1 million last April, it had quickly dipped down by the end of that month to $965,670. It stayed roughly there — below $1 million — right up until now.

But unrelenting high demand coupled with a shortage of listings — the supply of homes for sale was down 8.7 per cent in February, year over year — continues to fuel bidding wars which show no signs of letting up.

And it’s still a few weeks until peak spring market.

“The strong year-over-year price growth we experienced in February points to the robust demand for ownership housing in the GTA, coupled with a constrained supply of homes for sale in some market segments, especially where low-rise home types like singles, semis and townhouses are concerned,” said Jason Mercer, the real estate board’s director of analysis in a statement. Read full article >>

Looking to buy, sell or refinance? Know your options. I can help! Direct line: 416-219-6662