#sorry i draw your characters so much goddam | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ecotone99 · 5 years ago

Text

[RF] A Salivation Of Words After A Robbery

Ravi had just worked a double shift and was having trouble keeping his eyes open. Wearily, he said goodbye to the employees he managed and handed the keys to the store over to the much younger assistant manager. He slipped into his almost stereotypically bad car, lit a cigarette, and sped off into the night accompanied by some forgotten 80’s music. Finally after a longish boorish drive, he was free to sequester himself away in his empty apartment, drink in hand, by the stabbing blue light of a TV screen.

Since leaving University Ravi’s life had ordered itself, quite efficiently, into a perfectly routine, routine. A routine which Ravi adhered too with the clinical detachment of a doctor observing the decline of a long suffering terminally ill patient. He would rise late and usually hungover, unless work demanded an early start, then he would spend the rest of the morning (by which I mean the time between 11am and 1pm) drinking coffee and watching cricket reruns. After dressing he would go out to a café somewhere for ‘breakfast,’ then loiter around the parking lots of second hand bookshops, smoking, until he had to leave for work. On the days when he didn’t have work he would return to his apartment to read and watch even more television. Sometimes on the weekend he would go out to a friend’s house for a party. And sometimes his friends would come to his apartment for one.

As Ravi had grown older the type of parties that he attended changed. When he was young and still frittering his time away at high school his revelries where pure Dionysian triumphs. With enough music, drugs, and alcohol abuse to make even the most hardened libertine nervous. Now, however, the gatherings he attended where ascetic celebrations of restraint; without music or fanfare, with far less drugs, and far less alcohol. These adult gatherings, party isn’t really the right word for them, weren’t any less fun than the outings of his youth, all the same people were there which is what counts after all, it’s just… they were different somehow, less explosive. It was one such gathering, that Ravi found himself hosting, which set in motion the events of the coming months.

This story isn’t particularly concerned with the motivations and backstories of every character at Ravi’s gathering that night. However, some parting sentences to describe Ravi’s soon to be accomplices seems in order. Nevertheless I hesitate to tell my reader the names of my secondary characters and give their essence form, as if such a futile gesture would stave off the necessity of telling this most accurate history. But they can wait no longer. Their names are like two impatient children pressing their noses up against a car window in order to hurry me their long suffering parent along… Charles and Tom. There I have named you, happy?

Both Charles and Tom had, like Ravi, found occupations or put more accurately distractions to occupy their time on Earth, little trivialities and empty ambitions to cherish and nurture in order that their lives might have some semblance of purpose. We might as well begin with Charles, a freelance journalist who desired nothing more than for his bottom draw fiction to be published. And then admired. I have heard that he used to ease his anxieties surrounding the lack of literary success he experienced by recalling an anecdote he had overheard somewhere about James Joyce submitting the manuscript for Ulysses forty two times before it was serialised. On the other hand, Tom had married young and was currently ‘raising’ a son while his wife supported him, the child being the reason for the young marriage. It was Tom, I might add, who was responsible for the limited range of illicit substances present at Ravi’s gathering that night.

As I speak to you, my dear reader, tapping out my little words on a keyboard in the dark, Tom was holding forth to Charles and Ravi about the realities of economic inequality, whilst cutting weed for a joint. That discourse sounds more interesting than the overly indulgent descriptions I find myself writing so I might as well draw your attention to that, which appears to me to be far more interesting than this.

“Under capitalism,” began Tom in a self-important manner, “Us workers are given the choice between employment and unemployment. By who? It’s not important right now. But it appears to me that any distinction between the two is arbitrary. We have to work or we starve to death.”

“Listen, man, what your describing is called wage slavery. You’re not being new. You’re not being original. So you can shelve the rhetoric,” said Charles, “Why don’t we talk about something else?”

“What are you going to do about it then? Seeing you know all the answers,” retorted Tom.

“Nothing,” answered Charles, in a bored voice, “We’ve already tried guillotining the rich and heading up new regimes. It doesn’t work. The only thing we can do is to build up enough cash to escape this rat race we’ve been trapped in.”

“Goddam it! Are we doing this or are we going to spend the rest of the night arguing about Marxism 101. Because if it’s the latter, I’m out. I’ve already sat through enough beer hall pushes in Uni. I’m not going to sit through another one now,” exclaimed Ravi, a man with his priorities in order. Tom stopped fiddling with the papers he was trying to roll and looked with wounded revolutionary pride at Ravi. A moment passed. Then Tom finished rolling his joint, lit it, took a drag, and handed it to Charles. Pointedly.

“Here’s something for you to consider Ravi,” said Tom, “How much money does the Pizza shop you manage make in a week? And how much is it you get paid a week?”

“That depends on the week,” said Ravi evenly, taking a drag from the cigarette proffered to him by Charles, “On a good one, when like the footy is on or the ashes, the store makes about $90,000. I make about $500, enough for my rent and other expenses like funding these soirees.”

“And what does your owner, sorry, the owner contribute besides his capital?” continued Tom.

“What’s the point of this inquisition, mate?” asked Ravi, “Some Second Directorate banter to check if I’m a good party member?”

“No point,” said Tom, “But imagine how much easier our lives would be if we had even a third of that.”

“Whatever comrade,” said Ravi.

They finished the weed in silence. After which, Charles quietly got drunk in a corner. Tom left early because he had to look after his kid the next morning. Ravi flirted with a girl who clearly, well… clearly for everyone except Ravi, had no interest in him. However, the next night while Ravi was finishing up after a particularly exhausting shift he thought of what they had discussed that night. He opened the safe underneath the store-front counter and absentmindedly leafed through the envelopes inside which contained the fruits of that week’s labour. Then he shut it and went home.

An idea was slowly taking over Ravi’s mind and the more he refused to acknowledge it the more its hold on him grew. It appeared to him while he was falling asleep, it confronted him while he was in the shower, it menaced him at work, and it threatened to break his kneecaps whilst he was doing the thousand menial chores and duties people find to occupy themselves throughout the day. A true intellectual shake-down. Finally, so as to satisfy his idea’s incessant blabbering he decided to share it with his friends and receive their learned opinions on it. His reasoning being if they were against it, it would disappear and if they were for it, it would be eliminated by action.

He organised a meeting (Meeting? Yes, meeting it the right word) with Tom and Charles at an old diner early one morning. Ravi, being the first one to arrive, reserved a corner booth to wait and drink coffee at while he worked out what exactly he wanted to say. Soon he was joined by Charles, who sat down opposite him and struck up a conversation.

“Did you get a chance to look at the manuscript I sent you?” asked Charles, attempting to take a nonchalant tone but failing.

“Yes. I did,” said Ravi, with a vacuity purposely designed to provoke Charles.

“Well, what did you think?” asked Charles.

“Have you been reading Camus again?” said Ravi, and Charles nodded guiltily, “You know the effect he has on your narratives! I thought you wanted this one to have a happy ending. Isn’t that what you told me when you showed me the outline the other day?”

“I couldn’t help myself!” said Charles, echoing that famous junkie line to the dismay of everyone familiar with absurdism, “I was cleaning away some books and I glanced through a copy of The Myth of Sisyphus. It’s something that could happen to any artist, if he’s caught off guard. French intellectualism ruined my life!”

“Parts of it were certainly absurd,” said Ravi, then he relented, “But it lacked action! Your characters need to do things for a story to be satisfying. They can’t just sit around in café’s all day. There has to be a call to action so they leave their comforts and enter an unfamiliar situation otherwise a story feels flat and lifeless. I couldn’t find an inciting incident in that thing if you pointed it out.”

“What’s up dickheads?” said Tom, sitting down next to Ravi and picking up a menu.

“We were just talking about a short story I wrote,” Charles said, then growing defensive, “What would you have my characters do instead? Didi and Gogo don’t do anything for an entire fucking play! I might not have Beckett’s gift for being unintelligible but I can write a good narrative. So what if there’s not a lot of action?”

“You didn’t send me a copy,” said Tom.

“No offence, but it’s not finished yet and you’re not the best at literary criticism. The last time I asked your opinion on something you took a week to essentially say: ‘needs more sex.’” Charles said.

“It was meant to be a Romance story! Noting happened!” exclaimed Tom, “And just because I didn’t spend four years studying lit-ret-tuah like you and Ravi doesn’t mean I’m not right!”

“Both of you, shut the fuck up!” said Ravi, playing the role of peacemaker, “Tom your opinion’s not invalid. Charles grow up and accept Tom knows more about relationships than you do. Let’s move on to something else. What are you guys getting?”

“Salad looks good,” muttered Charles.

“I want to try one of those breakfast rolls,” declared Tom.

And having successfully steered the conversation in such a way that neither Charles’ artistic integrity nor Tom’s sensual pride were damaged, Ravi ordered an omelette. They ate in relatively peaceful silence. When they had finished and the waiters had cleared their food scraps away Ravi leaned forward to speak.

“Listen, do you guys remember what we were talking about the other day at my gathering?” began Ravi, “How it isn’t fair that I run a business basically by myself and that my boss gets to keep everything just because he inherited a bit of capital?”

“Vaguely,” said Tom, “But I also remember somebody… suggesting that there wasn’t anything we could do about it but buck up and work under it.”

“Well what if we could do something about it? What if I had a way that we could take a piece of that pie for ourselves and use it to get away from it all?”

“Are you suggesting we start our own company or some Pizza Shrugged Ayn Rand shit like that?” asked Charles, “Because we’ve firmly established by now that none of us have any money.

“That’s not it. I have a way that we could take enough money from that parasite with which we could all live a bit more securely for a few years,” said Ravi.

“What, do you mean steal it?” asked Tom.

“Exactly, but before you answer. Do you remember the figure I told you $90,000? The long weekend is coming up and the people who collect the money will be off and so instead of just one week we could get a fortnights ransom. Almost $200,000!” said Ravi, and though Charles looked hesitant Tom seemed excited.

“Jesus Christ!” he said, “How would you even pull something like that off?”

“Simple, we wait until late at night. I’ll schedule the roster so it’ll just be me and some other random there, corporate policy says there has to be two of us there the whole time. Tom you come in with a shotgun or something, wave it about and demand the contents of the safe under the counter. It has all the money in it. Then I’ll just give it to you! You fuck off and Charles can be the getaway driver,” explained Ravi.

“Hold on just a fucking second,” said Charles, finally getting a chance to speak, “You can’t be serious. This is armed robbery you’re talking about here. Is this really what we’ve come too? What about the cameras? Won’t the police notice if we suddenly come into hundreds of thousands of dollars after the store you work at is robbed?”

Ravi paused for a second before answering, “For a start the cameras are only pointed at the employees to make sure we don’t steal anything, ironic I know, but they won’t see anything incriminating. And while I admit that the methods are detestable $60,000 is two years wages for me. I could do anything with that, I could be free. Live my life…”

“As for the police tracing our bank accounts I know a guy who could launder the money for us,” said Tom, “He could even find a getaway vehicle for you and me, Charles.”

“Who’s this? How do you know him?” asked Charles.

“I… uh… used to sell pot for him,” said Tom.

“Charles you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. It was just an idea I had. But if we do it and you’re not a part of it I guarantee you’ll regret it,” said Ravi.

“I don’t know. I’ll think about it,” said Charles. And so it was decided that the idea that had been tormenting poor Ravi mind was to be put into action.

Now I have established this story’s conceit, I hope in a way that seems believable, and since our characters are now entering an unfamiliar situation (finally, I know) I think that we can take a break from all this exhaustive conversation and just describe the plot. Don’t get me wrong I like the dialogue, when Ravi told me about it I thought it was funny and meta and philosophically inclined. But I have pages of handwritten notes to transcribe and a deadline (just between you and me the deadline was the real impetus for this narrative shift). But I digress. It is sufficient to know that Charles, Tom, and Ravi continued to meet and flesh out the details of their plot without my supervision.

Ravi wok late (or for him, usual) on the day of the robbery to discover Tom had acquired the getaway vehicle and he and Charles were waiting inside his apartment. He made coffee and greeted his co-conspirators like Brutus greeting Cassius some fateful morning (Hyperbole! Ha, Ha cue laughter). And after going over the plan several times they sat in silent apprehension, watching television, barely talking, until it was time for Ravi to leave.

Throughout his shift Ravi watched the clock tick down like a condemned man waiting for the appointed time he was to be taken to the scaffold. He spent most of his shift that night sitting in a small office located just off the kitchen, ostensibly going over the hours but really waiting. One by one he watched his co-workers leave as he had scheduled them to until it was just him and a girl named Sophie alone in the shop. He left his office and paused. Through the front window he saw the getaway car pull up and he watched Tom get out of it wearing a balaclava and holding a shotgun. Tom advanced on the store with all the fortitude of a soldier storming Omaha beach. He opened the door, stepped inside, and shot a round into the ceiling causing a chunk of plaster to be blasted from the roof with deafening force. Tom stepped towards Ravi, holding out the bag, and pointing at the safe. Just as Ravi had planned. As Ravi started to fill the bag an alarm blared out from the kitchen behind them. Not at all like Ravi had planned. Tom strode forward to discover Sophie curled up on the floor next to a flashing security button. He dragged her to Ravi’s office and locked her inside it, although it would have been clear to anybody thinking rationally that she was in no condition to try anything else. He returned to where Ravi was holding the bag, in time to see Charles driving away. In the distance the sound of sirens could be heard.

“Fuck,” said Ravi. “Now what?”

“I don’t know,” said Tom.

“Here, you take these,” said Ravi, holding out the bag and the keys to his car, “I’ll distract them while you run.”

“No,” said Tom, “I’m the one with the gun. My prints are all over it. You fuck off. I’ll distract them.”

But Ravi hesitated, the very picture of indecision, “Are you sure?”

“Fucking go!” Tom yelled. And Ravi fled.

Now that I have recounted to you all these true and most accurate events I hesitate to write my conclusion lest I be accused of sentimentality, an egregious offence in the literary community to be sure. After all this story wasn’t about anything nearly as grand as a Napoleonic war, it was the simple story of a robbery gone wrong. But as this chapter draws to a close I think that the reader might find it interesting to know how I came to be in possession these facts. Rest assured though, I will enlighten you with as few words as possible knowing that by now the reader has more important things to do and is becoming tired of all this pretentiousness.

I met Ravi in a bar in some tropical shithole that my magazine felt compelled to send me to. We were the only people there, besides the bartender, so it was natural that we should start up a conversation. He must have been in his late thirties by that time although he looked as if he had been chewed up by the sun. After the usual small talk had been talked (and I had purchased several drinks for him) he described to me the events which I have now described to you.

“Well, what happened next? How did you end up here?” I asked.

“It was pretty simple really, looking back on it,” said Ravi. “I went to see the guy who was going to launder the money for us and he, after some discussion, arranged for me to be smuggled out of the country, to a dump pretty much like this one. I meandered about for a year or two until the money ran out then I took a job as a, shall we say, flower farmer. In the beginning I felt like Count Levin scythe in hand, living a good life. But unlike old Kostya I didn’t have a mansion to return to at the end of it all. I soon got tired of it…”

“What happened to Charles and Tom?” I asked, by now in full reporter mode.

“I don’t know what happened to Charles, my guess is that he was probably arrested. And Tom? He held those bastards off,” said Ravi.

“Do you regret it?” I asked.

“It was all over too quickly for me to have any real regrets. But I’m sad about what happened to my friend,” said Ravi, then adding quietly, “… I conclude that all is well.”

submitted by /u/Charles1123 [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2Q9I2wm

#Blogger #Story

0 notes

rebeccahpedersen · 6 years ago

Text

Top-Ten Burning Questions For The 2019 Real Estate Market

TorontoRealtyBlog

Just as my “year-end” blog posts are thematic, ie. the “Top Five Blog Posts” and the shortly-thereafter, “Top Five Real Estate Stories,” I usually feature some sort of early-2019 themed blogs as well.

Either predictions, questions, stories, or themes, I feel the best way to jump into the new year, of real estate blogging, is to offer up some discussion points…

…that we can all disagree on!

Kidding! Just kidding.

It’s been two weeks since we’ve all been in the same (virtual) room. I missed you guys!

Raise your hand if you had too much time with family over the break. Anyone? Anybody care to admit it?

I actually felt cheated this holiday season, since I didn’t spend as much time with family as I thought I would. My daughter was very sick after Christmas, with a fever that lasted for days, so we had to cut short our family-bonanza and stay home to care for her. If I ever watch another episode of “Paw Patrol,” it will be too soon. Seriously. How about five hours per day of that goddam show, in attempts to keep my child’s delirium at bay!? I can’t stand the characters anymore. That kid, Alex? Yeah, he drives me nuts. His entire existence is based upon making mistakes that the Paw Patrol has to clean up. And Mr. Porter? There’s something off about that guy. I wouldn’t trust him.

Post New Year’s, however, things were better. And what child doesn’t love opening Christmas presents one full week after Christmas, right? That’s how sick she was – she refused to open presents! So was she ever a happy camper on New Year’s day.

This was the first year we went out and cut down our own tree, which is something I might do every year, forever, or, something I will never do again. This tree basically dried up by mid-December, and by Christmas, the needles would literally fall off with a medium-sized exhale from your mouth. Our fingers had the touch of death, it was actually somewhat fascinating – seeing every last pine needle fall off a branch, just with a gentle touch.

This might be overkill, but I can’t resist. Plus, I don’t think words do this tree justice:

youtube

My wife hates taking the tree down every year; if it were up to her, we’d still have it up in February. But this year, with the pine-needle-extravaganza combined with her debilitating O.C.D., she was standing at the door with a saw and a garbage bag by January 1st. Our tree is sitting on the curb as we speak, and I actually saw a couple of passer-byers stop, point, giggle, and then laugh away. Yes, our tree is nothing but brown branches, without a green needle in sight.

I went 16 days without working out, I ate more pizza and Swiss Chalet than I care to mention, I was in bed on New Year’s Eve at 11:40pm (I actually forgot about the whole ‘midnight’ thing), and I spent way too much money on 1950’s hockey cards.

So those are my holiday stories, folks. Perhaps we could add the one night that I got tipsy and watched Home Alone, laughing like I was 5-years-old, and reciting every single line from memory, and I think the holiday recap is complete.

Now here we are with a new day, a new dawn, and a new……….real estate market.

Damn. That just doesn’t have the same “ring” to it as the Michael Buble song.

To start 2018 here on Toronto Realty Blog, I wrote “Predictions For The 2018 Toronto Real Estate Market.” I think that in attempts to avoid predictability, I should probably switch up the theme, so this year I’m going to look at “Ten Burning Questions.”

However, I would be remiss if I didn’t look back at my 2018 predictions, not only to remind readers what some of the hot topics were coming into the year, but also to look at how right, or how wrong, I was.

So for those of you that were hoping to see those “burning questions” today, I’m sorry. I’m a tease.

We’re going to start this 3-part blog series by looking back at my 2018 predictions, just to put the market in perspective.

There’s method to the madness, trust me.

Perhaps Bruce Lee’s “Empty your cup” analogy isn’t 100% accurate here, but I can’t help but feel like we can’t look ahead to 2019 before first emptying what’s left in the tank of 2018.

Plus, it will give some of you an opportunity to say “I told you so,” and who doesn’t love that?

I made five predictions coming into 2018, so here they are, and here’s how they turned out…

2018 Prediction #1: The average home price will increase in Toronto, in 2018.

This was wrong.

Dead wrong.

With a “peak” average home price in April of 2017 around $920,000, the November price was down to $761,757 at the time I wrote this blog, and the year-end price was looking like it would come in around $820,000.

My thinking was simple: the market had crapped out in May, June, July, and August, before making a modest comeback in the Fall. Average out the good months with the bad months, and the $820,000’ish average home price was incredibly depressed.

I surmised that we’d see a return to $820,000’ish numbers, which still represented a dramatic drop from that March-April peak of $916,000 and $920,000 and change.

I was wrong.

As I wrote in a December blog post, 2018 would be the first year since 1996 that the average home price declined, year-over-year, which was yet another reason why I predicted a 2018 increase. I suppose the “stick with the trend” mentality can only get you so far!

So how much did the average home price in Toronto actually decline in 2018?

The average home price in Toronto in 2017 was $822,572.

As of this writing, the December stats (and thus year-end stats) were just released by TREB. Talk about cutting it close!

My late-December blog post guesstimated a 2018 final average sale price of $790,000, based on a weighted average of the preceding 11 months. The average home price for 2018 actually came in at $787,300, so I wasn’t that far off.

That’s a 4.29% decline, year-over-year, in the Toronto average home price.

Just as a refresher, here’s the average home price movement since the last time we saw a decrease, and I’ve added in 2018:

So, once again, I was wrong.

But what about the Toronto-416 home price? Do I get a reprieve by looking at the “central core,” which I would probably argue can, and will, survive market forces in the short, medium, and long-term?

This overlaps with my second prediction, so at the risk of being repetitive, let me come back to this at the end of Prediction #2.

–

2018 Prediction #2: The freehold market will outpace the condo market.

Wrong again.

But I would love to meet the person who predicted the opposite coming into last year.

Generally-speaking, houses are more popular than condos, agree? That’s simplistic, but let’s say that if most people had a choice, they would live in a house over a condo, and it’s price that’s stopping them from doing so. It’s also supply.

So coming into 2018, with the same “they’re not building any more houses in Toronto; it’s just cranes in the sky” mentality, I can’t look back and say I should have seen the condo appreciation coming.

So how did the housing market do in 2017 versus 2018?

Well, because the Toronto Real Estate Board refuses to provide us with the appropriate data points (let’s just say that on December 31st, they were ringing in 2006…), I took the time to plot each and every month’s sales and sale prices for the four major housing types, in the past 24 months: condo, detached, semi-detached, and townhouse. This is the only way to get true, accurate numbers.

You don’t need the charts to understand the conclusions, but I spent so much damn time on this, I may as well share it!

Here you can see the sale price for each housing type, in each month, and the corresponding number of sales. Why is the number of sales important? Because we need a weighted-average to get an accurate yearly number. If there were 2,000 sales in May, and only 500 sales in December, we can’t simply average the two corresponding months’ sale prices. We need a weighted-average based on sales.

Then I’ve taken a further weighted average of all the all the sale types, and come up with a freehold average for detached, semi-detached, and townhouse, which we can see there is $1,194,327.

That is the true average freehold sale price for 2017. And gosh-darnit, I would love if TREB would make this available, but I won’t hold my breath…

So three things to look at here:

1) How wrong was I with respect to my 2018 prediction that the freehold market would outpace the condo market? 2) While we’re at it, and while we have this data set, how did the Toronto (416) market compare to the overall “Toronto” market that we’re accustomed to hearing about? 3) In Toronto-416, how does the year-over-year average sale price look for the four individual home types (ie. freehold, semi-detached, townhouse, condo)?

First thing’s first, here is the 2018 data:

Well, I think the bolded numbers pretty much sum it up!

Keeping in mind that we’re looking at the 416 and not the overall Toronto market with respect to the “freehold versus condo” comparison, the data speaks volumes.

The 2018 freehold price of $1,132,633 trails the 2017 freehold price of $1,194,327 by 5.17%.

And the 2018 condo price of $592,922, as you can see, is well ahead of that $545,635 price that the market experienced in 2017.

The freehold market went down by 5.2%.

The condo market went up by 8.7%.

I was wrong, as I said before. But with that out of the way, what conclusions can we draw from all of this, and/or what questions should be asked?

I suppose we’d want know, first and foremost, why the 416-Toronto condo market was so resilient!

Were condos under-valued coming into 2017? And did they remain under-valued coming into 2018?

Does this mean we should expect condos to cool in 2019? By association, should we expect the freehold market to outpace the condo market in 2019?

All good questions, and all with answers that will vary dramatically depending on your interpretation for the last 24 month’s market activity, and your prognostications.

As for the second question asked above – how the Toronto-416 market compared to the overall Toronto market, there’s a huge difference, but I think this could have been easily predicted.

Some of you might doubt the conclusions, since the rhetoric has been nothing but doom-and-gloom all year, but this is a stat that TREB does provide, so go to the Market Watch and see for yourself.

The average sale price in Toronto-GTA is down 4.3%; that’s $787,300 up from $822,587.

The average sale price in Toronto-416 is actually up by 0.2%; that’s $835,422, up from $834,138.

As for the third question, here is where things get interesting.

These stats are from my spreadsheets above, since TREB does not provide a breakdown of the four property types, year-to-date, in the 416:

Freehold – down 7.0%

Semi-Detached – up 1.0%

Townhouse – up 2.5%

Condo – up 8.7%

Basically we’re looking at a market that has seen a 0.2% appreciation overall, where the decrease in average freehold price has been offset by the increase in average condo price, and with the smaller sample-sizes of semi-detached and townhouse helping to round out the final number.

All in all, it was a great year for condos, a down year for detached, and a flat year for the 416 on the whole.

I chalk up part of the reason for the 7% decline in 416-detached homes to far fewer “luxury” homes trading hands, which upsets the balance, but admittedly the overall detached market is down. Now to be fair, it really depends on price once again. If a $1,000,000 semi-detached is up 1% on average, I’m willing to bet the $1,150,000 detached house next door is also up 1% on average as well. I think the $2.8M detached houses at Avenue & Lawrence are down, no question. But we always have to be careful not to paint a whole subset of housing with the same brush.

–

The rest of my predictions were less interesting, and in the interest of time, I’ll summarize.

3) The “stress-test” will have a short-term effect, but no medium-term effect.

The stress-test definitely did have a short-term effect. I had clients in January that had to scale back their target purchase prices, but only two.

I heard from other agents working with buyers that the situation was a bit more prevalent, but as I said last year, most buyers don’t buy to their max pre-approval, so I didn’t think the decrease in mortgage amount would actually lead to a decrease in purchase amount.

–

4) Banks will change their lending criteria.

I was right about this, but for the wrong reason.

Toward the end of 2018, I saw banks tightening up their criteria in a big way.

And in one specific case, for the sale of a condominium listing, I was asked for a copy of the Status Certificate – are you ready for this? From the bank!

That’s right, the bank wanted a copy of the Status, which is something I have never seen before. They likely wanted to ensure that there were no maintenance fee increases scheduled, or no special assessments for the condo corporation. Perhaps it was a buyer who was right up against the ceiling.

Coming into 2018, I figured banks would change their lending criteria to allow them to lend more.

I always say, “Banks are in the business of loaning money, and they’ll find a way to do so.” If the government enacts measures to curb or restrict lending, the banks will find a way around it. Coming in to 2018, I started to see some banks get creative, but that was short-lived.

Alternative lenders and B-lenders picked up a lot of the slack in 2018.

–

5) The spring market will provide the reverse chronology of 2017.

I nailed this one, as the following chart, updated from my 2018 blog, will show:

–

6) The government is finished meddling in the real estate market.

This was true, for the most part.

Doug Ford did tinker with rent control in late-2018, but we didn’t see anything this past year like we saw in 2017 with the launch of the “Fair Housing Plan,” and there were no major government initiatives enacted this year. You might attribute that to Prediction #7…

–

7) Kathleen Wynne will Wynne another Premiership, and that’s scary for home-owners, and home-buyers.

Wrong about this one too.

I suppose I underestimated the zeal of voters, who I thought would rather be guided by the devil they know, than the devil they don’t.

But in the end, we decided we’d rather have a 1980’s drug kingpin lead the province than a person who wants to tax us to death.

Time will tell if we made the right call.

–

And on that wonderful note, I adjourn until Wednesday…

The post Top-Ten Burning Questions For The 2019 Real Estate Market appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

Originated from http://bit.ly/2FdY5UM