If you’re in the city this weekend, feel free to drop by our booth at the Cottage Life Show and say “hi”. I’ll be at the Show today from 3:00 pm until 6:00 pm, and then again tomorrow from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. Bonnie will be working at the booth tomorrow from 3:00 pm until closing, then again all day Sunday.
We’d love to see you, so drop by our booth and introduce yourself!
After several months of development, I’m very pleased to announce that my newly designed website is up and running.
Geton.com Technologies Inc. of Kelowna, B.C. did a fantastic job with the design and back end of the website, which offers most (if not all, to be honest) of the things ,clients have been asking for…..a clean, easy to navigate design, large, detailed property photos, interactive mapping, and multimedia functionality (check out some of the Animoto videos). Users will also be able to search for properties using “tags” (i.e.: you can find properties with sunset views, or rocky shorelines).
Check it out at www.jimmarshall.ca and feel free to get back to me with comments or suggestions.
I’m not sure if it is just me, but I’ve noticed a subtle change in the tone of the media in regards to the economy over the past week.
For example, this morning’s Toronto Star featured an article about the inflation rate rising for the first time in months. The surprising aspect of the article is that is managed to spin this into a positive thing. It appears that the little inflation in the economy is a good thing, especially when compared to the harm deflation could do.
The media, especially print media (newspapers and magazines) have been seeing a decline in readership for several years, and have seen advertising revenues plunge as they compete with free online classified services like Craigslist and Kijijii. Throw in soaring distribution and newsprint costs and you have a situation where we’re starting to see print media move complete onto the Internet, or, as in the case of the Denver based Rocky Mountain News, close its doors without warning.
Through both the boom and bust times of this decade, the news media has tended to throw objectivity and sound reporting out the window in place of the print equivalent of the “sound bite”. Take this headline from the March 17 2009 edition of the Toronto Star;
Is this like sucking and blowing at the same time? The article, penned by The Star’s Tony Wong, goes on to say that market conditions have begun to improve across the country and there is some hope that the market will continue to improve in the spring.
But you’d never know that from the gloomy headline.
I suppose I’m naive, assuming the national media is more interested in reporting the news with a healthy smattering of objectivity, as opposed to scare-mongering the public with exaggerated headlines. Journalism in Canada isn’t quite as bad as Fox News is in the U.S., but it’s getting there.
If you’re interested in buying waterfront property in 2009, start off by visiting the Cottage Life Show at the International Centre, March 27th-March 29th.
This three day, pre-season event is the traditional kick-off to the cottage season and is a great opportunity to start researching your cottage purchase.
If you’re at the Show, feel free to drop by our RE/MAX booth in the real estate section and say hi. Odds are pretty good that either Bonnie or myself will be at the booth at any one point and we’d love to meet you in person.
You can buy tickets online and save $1.50/adult by clicking here
With a good week of spring weather being forecast, we’ll soon be putting snow shovels away and start to get into “no snow” mode. For us in the Parry Sound area, that means that cottage season is just ahead of us.
Although many cottages are now used on a yearly basis, the cottage real estate market officially gets going around the end of March, coinciding with the Cottage Life Show in Toronto. Since that’s only three weeks from now, we in the recreational real estate business will be busy getting promotional material together, making hotel bookings and listing cottages and waterfront properties to market at the show.
If you’ve been thinking of selling, this is the time to get the ball rolling. To make sure we’re able to include you in our property brochure, you have until March 18th to get your property on the market. If you’re looking to buy (and it is a great time to buy), make sure you’re working with a Realtor in cottage county (like me) who is in touch with the market, and who will inform you as new potential properties become available.
There are other enjoying things to do in cottage country before the snow melts, including:
MLS sales numbers in the Parry Sound Real Estate Board area seem to indicate that the market has stabilized after trending down for a good part of 2008. While winter sales statistics might not be the best barometer for future market performance, at least we’re starting to get some idea of what’s in store for 2009 and I see reason for (guarded) optimism.
While sales numbers are significantly lower for the current year’s January to February time period compared to 2008 (31 units to 49 units), they almost mirror the November-December 2008 numbers of 2008 (34 units).
If we look back further in time (the 1990′s to be specific), we see the following:
These numbers seem to concur with my opinion that after the market collapse of the late 1980′s-early 1990′s, we didn’t see a marked improvement until the late 90′s. It would appear that our current market is similar to what we experienced ten years ago; stable conditions trending towards slow and steady appreciation.
As a footnote, I think that the widely-held belief that “healthy” markets must experience inflationary growth is fundamentally flawed (I remember one of my economic professors teaching us about the evils of inflation). Healthy markets can exist without annual 5-10% increases in prices, and that is especially true for real estate markets. For the past several years, price appreciation levels cruised well above the national consumer price index and the sad fact is that housing costs (and waterfront real estate in particular in our area) become increasing expensive, effecting disenfranchised a growing segment of the population. As the market has “cooled”, the cost of acquisition (with record low interest rates an added bonus) has eased up, and real estate becomes more affordable.
That in my mind is a good thing.
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