Roy Houshmand

07/31/2023

Looking for an administrative assistant to start immediately. Please call me direct.

11/04/2021

Happy Diwali to all my friends and colleagues.

04/14/2021

How do you get more than your home's listing price? My book will show you how! Click below to get your FREE copy!

Learn more about Mississauga's local real estate market expert.

03/18/2021

The Best Day to List a House for Sale🏠

How to Time Your Home Listing: Generally, it’s best to list as early as possible on a Friday Prime time for real estate agents to post on Multiple Listing Service is 12:01 am on a Friday.

🔶Other Days
While Fridays offer advantages for when to list homes, it's certainly possible to list homes on other days and still sell them. There tend to be more arguments against listing on other days, however, than there are against listing on Fridays.

The problem with Mondays is that people tend to be more focused on the workweek than on shopping for homes. Moreover, Mondays often are when federal holidays land. The weekend also is not a great time to list your home for sale because most people like to plan a weekend in advance. Thursdays are a bad idea because agents who work weekends typically take Thursdays off. That leaves Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which allow buyers to plan for the weekend but don't offer the same benefits as Fridays.

🔶Best Time of the Year
Springtime is usually considered the best time of year to list a home. The National Association of Realtors designated April 20-21 as Nationwide Open House Weekend in 2013.

In some parts of the country where it doesn't snow, February or March might be an excellent time to list your home. Your local real estate agent would be your best source of information about which month in spring is best for you, and she can specifically offer tips about selling in spring.

If you miss the spring market, the second-best option is the fall market, right after Labor Day weekend. Contrary to popular belief, most people don't want to move over the summer. It is a time for vacations, family get-togethers, kicking back, or home improvement projects that are in line with planned fall activities

🔺Reference: https://cutt.ly/RxwuJJm

03/17/2021

National Housing Starts Slowed in February After Months of Strong Growth🔶

After months of increased activity, the annual pace of housing starts slowed in February compared to January, according to the Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation (CMHC).

The national housing agency says the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts for February fell 13.5% to 245,922 units compared to 284,372 in the month before.

The decline in housing starts came as the annual pace of urban starts fell 14% in February to 231,042 units as the pace of starts of apartments, condos, and other types of multiple-unit housing projects fell 15.8% to 163,757.

The annual pace of urban starts of single-detached homes fell 9.3% to 67,285.

CMHC also reported that rural starts were estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 14,880 units.

According to CMHC, the six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates of housing starts was 242,777 in February, down from 244,963 in January.

The trend in housing starts was 242,777 units in February 2021, down from 244,963 units in January 2021.

On a more local level, CMHC said housing starts for single-detached homes in Ontario reached 1,560 in February, up 44% year-over-year, from 1,083. While in Toronto, starts for single-detached homes were 456 in February, a 98% increase from the year prior when 230 starts were recorded.

When Seasonally Adjusted at Annual Rates (SAAR), CMHC said Ontario had 28,397 starts for single-detached homes last month, a 13% increase from the same time a year prior when 25,025 starts were recorded. In Toronto, the SAAR for starts was 10,622 in February, a 74% rise from a year prior when 10,622 starts were recorded.

🔹Reference: https://cutt.ly/9z4VSvl

03/16/2021

🔶5 Reasons Condos Make The Best Real Estate Investment

If you are looking to invest in property, buying a condo as a real estate investment property is the best idea for plenty of reasons. Here are some of them why you should invest in a condo in 2021:

✅Desirable locations
In fact, one of the best things people love about living in condos is that they allow you access to prime locations, such as ski towns or beachfronts, for a fraction of the price of single family homes. If you invest in a condo in a desirable location, chances are your unit will never sit vacant.

✅Exciting Amenities To Attract Renters
In contrast to single family homes or other types of residences, condos are a part of a community with a lot of facilities for all building dwellers. Even the most basic condo building will allow residents access to swimming pools, play areas, a fitness center and even a lounge. These amenities are better at attracting more number of renters for your property.

✅A Sense of Community
Renters often prefer condos over other property types due to the higher sense of community condo living offers. In addition to catching up with other tenants when using the condo’s different amenities and communal spaces, a lot of condo associations also host planned social events to bring all residents together and foster a community spirit.

✅High Market Demand
Toronto real estate market has fallen prey to urbanization and we are seeing more and more families, young couples, and professionals moving to major urban locations to be close to their workspaces and shorten the daily commute.

✅Less repairs to handle
When you buy into a new condo building, you will get a brand new condo unit, fitted with all the facilities. You can shrug the worry of repairs off your shoulders for a couple more years.

🔸Reference: https://cutt.ly/YzR1Jf5

03/16/2021

One COVID-Year Later: Everything That’s Happened in Toronto’s Condo Sector🌁

Guess who’s back, back again? March. Or, at this point, is it simply March 373rd?

Either way, we’re officially staring down the barrel of one year of COVID-19-related shutdowns in Toronto.

In mid-March 2020, many city-dwellers were sent home from their offices, told they may not return for a couple weeks. From there, you know the story: two weeks turned into two months, then six, then eight.

Now, a year later, we’re reflecting on how the pandemic has influenced the real estate market.

🏔️Winter 2019-20: Pre-COVID Predictions

As 2019 closed, industry insiders made their predictions about what the turn of the decade would bring Toronto real estate. The condo sector was projected to remain the city’s hottest, with persistent demand expected to push costs ever-higher.

🌺Spring 2020: The Condo Market Doesn’t Bloom
The year started out strong. Activity was bustling and, even as word of the novel coronavirus began circulating in January and February, sales were up 9.7% and 26.2% respectively in those months.

But then March arrived, and the energy shifted.

As a result of COVID’s tightening grip, both prices and transactions began to fall.

Hot Scary Summer 2020
The average price of Toronto condos rose by 5.6% in June, to $672,000.

By July, it was clear the city’s rental sphere had softened for the first time in years.

Autumn 2020 Brings Bottom of COVID Condo Crash

TRREB reported that year-over-year, condos saw a sales increase of only 7% in September. In the 416, the month saw 1,549 properties sold in the sector.

🌺Spring 2021: A Condo Market in Bloom
While no, it’s not technically spring quite yet, we are only days away from the seasonal solstice. As the city is enveloped by milder temperatures and post-6 pm-sunsets, industry insiders predict the weeks and months ahead will only mean continued recovery for the condo sector.

📍Reference: https://cutt.ly/XzC7jvj

03/12/2021

What landlords can learn from the pandemic🏠✍️

The rental market has been hit hard by the pandemic. With Ontario experiencing a downward trend in the number of reported cases and several vaccines rolling out across the world, more investors are becoming hopeful of the rental market and general economy recovering. Here are some rental market lessons taught by the pandemic that you should consider as a landlord.

🔺Flexibility is key
It is important, now more than ever, to be flexible in the rental application review process. Many parts of the economy, including the rental market, have changed drastically due to the pandemic, and so have people’s financial situations. As a landlord, try to consider broader credit score ranges and income types in your tenant applicants, as well as easing up on some of the rules you have previously set – for example, pet restrictions.

🔺Better customer service at every step
When you’re managing a rental property, you’re running a business. You should see tenants as your clients. Treat your tenants, both prospective and current, like you would treat an important client throughout the process.

🔺Safety first!
With current social distancing and safety measures, many people are wary of open houses. Think about how to safely host viewings, such as having people at a reduced capacity (for example, a two-person maximum), requiring everyone to wear masks indoors at all times and providing hand sanitizers before they enter the unit.

🔺Work with your tenants
In the current market, finding and holding on to a good tenant has become a challenging quest of its own. If you are lucky enough to have great tenants, you should try to do everything you reasonably can to keep them.

📍Reference: https://cutt.ly/hzOY88b

03/11/2021

Is An “Affordability Crisis” Looming Over the GTA Housing Market?🏠

While the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) housing market may have weathered the initial COVID-19 storm, it’s far from over, as the region must now overcome its next pandemic-induced obstacle: housing affordability.

Many have cautioned that real estate in the region is on the cusp of a bubble burst, though, RE/MAX argues that the GTA is now in the midst of a housing affordability crisis.

Despite admitting to the sure signs of overheating there are so far no plans to raise interest rates until the economy and employment are back on track following the declines caused by COVID-19.

And, amid the pandemic, the GTA’s real estate market for single-family homes continues to grow hotter, with home prices and transactions in the region soaring to record-breaking heights.

Just last month, the average price of a home in the region — including all types of houses and condos — rose 14.9% year-over-year to $1,045,488, surpassing the million-dollar mark for the first time in history, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB).

There were also 10,970 sales recorded in February — a 52.5% increase compared to 7,193 sales reported during the same month in 2020, while new listings were up 42.6% compared to February 2020 — but sales are still outpacing any new supply coming on the market.

While Toronto is always considered one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, the robust growth in the region can be attributed to activity in the surrounding suburbs.

Markets outside of Toronto really heated up in the wake of the pandemic, as homebuyers’ newfound flexibility due to remote work arrangements allowed them to look outside of the city core for homes offering more indoor and outdoor space at a more affordable price.

🔺Reference: https://cutt.ly/HzTcYn8

03/10/2021

4 Steps to Easily Declutter Your Home🏠

Making the most of our space at home is one of the skills that almost all of us had to cultivate during the pandemic-dominated past year. However, regardless of how efficiently you are using your home, sometimes there’s just not enough room for you and your family to really thrive.

Fortunately, there are simple ways to squeeze a bit more space from your home, from rearranging furniture to sorting through your belongings and deciding what stays and what goes.

💻1. Start with a thorough sorting out of your stuff

From clothing and books to furniture, appliances, sport equipment and tools, you should sort through all the main categories of belongings in your home.
Get rid of the items you have not used in a while. Donate or sell everything that’s in good shape and recycle or throw away the damaged stuff.

💻2. Decide what should go into storage

Once you finish sorting out your belongings, it will become clearer what items simply take space in your home without bringing any benefits and what you are using on a daily basis around the house. However, there’s a third large category of belongings — items you use only occasionally, or seasonally, but you definitely need. Putting them in self storage creates extra space at home, while also allowing you to hold onto them.

💻3. How big of a storage unit do I need?
St orage units are available in a huge variety of sizes, from small lockers to units large enough for an RV, so you can pick just the right size for your needs.

💻4. Improve the flow of your home

Make sure that you use your newly found extra space at home as efficiently as possible. Rearrange larger pieces of furniture to make it easy to navigate around your house. The path from one room to another should be unobstructed.

☀️Reference: https://cutt.ly/fzrYBNO