In my ongoing saga to purchase a home in a real estate market that hasn’t seen a price drop in over 7 years, I bring you my next instalment.  My intention with these stories is to show you the new reality of what’s happening in the market.  I’m not saying that the decisions the sellers make is right or wrong rather not the outcome I hope.  As I had mentioned, I don’t know which way the market will go in the coming months other than I’m hoping that it will be balanced.

The corner Side split 4

While I’ve been searching for a property mostly in Toronto, I’ve also been keeping an eye on properties in Mississauga and have found some great listings there that I went and saw.  Such was a property I saw in Port Credit.  There are couple of reasons why I picked the ones I saw.

1. Older properties tend to be in lower demand in Mississauga.
2. There is only one land transfer tax
3. Mississauga, especially Port Credit, isn’t much further than say North Etobicoke to downtown Toronto

Older properties:

Since there haven’t been many new single family homes developments in Mississauga over the past 5 years, older properties are the only option available to buyers here now.  It’s not an uncommon question or request from buyers, even today, to buy properties that are newer than say properties that were built in the 50’s and 60’s.

I’m sure many REALTOR and buyers can attest to having specific criteria to purchase only properties that were five years old or newer which gave way to areas such as Churchill meadows to gain so much popularity since they had the newest and some of the last developments in the city.  Buyers that were moving from Toronto didn’t seem to care much about age as properties are older in the city but local buyers did see that as a negative.  This created a niche where you were able to find some interesting properties.

One land transfer tax:

Mississauga, at one point, discussed and toyed with the idea of having a municipal land transfer tax implemented for all purchases made in the city which was opposed by local REALTOR and for good reason.  Implementing a transfer like Toronto would’ve made Mississauga far less attractive than other cities in the area and would’ve placed more importance on Toronto for buyers since it would cost the same.  This decision helped elevate property values in Mississauga as more and more buyers not wanting to pay the Toronto Land Transfer tax and willing to commute started moving to the city and soon the city started noticing a nice bump in pricing.  You can read a great paper issued on the issue here.

Sensing this as an opportunity, I’ve kept an eye on properties here that are older in hopes of finding something that needs work and has good bones.  During my search, I came across a property that was listed for $790,000.  After seeing the property, it was evident that the property was renovated with the intention of being sold.  We saw the property pretty early and since it had an offer date, opted to stay on the sidelines to see what will happen.

As expected, the property sat there on the market for over three weeks which is when I approached the agent to possibly put in an offer.  The owner, also a real estate agent, never got back to me.  I tried repeatedly to get in touch with the agent and never got a call back and then it happened.

I woke up to see an alert for a property which was now listed for $995,000 and is still available.  The price puts it outside my budget so I will keep looking.

I have one more story to share with you and am also coming up with some others that I’m facing.  I’m rather enjoying telling these stories so will try and keep these coming.

Hope you enjoyed the Canada Day celebrations this weekend and I will see you soon!