A little late in the year for such incredible action on houses, no?

The saying “money never sleeps” might have been the tagline for Wall Street II, which was an awful disappointment – a topic for another day.  But maybe it’s applicable to the Toronto housing market as well?

At the start of the month, I wrote about how very few single family homes come onto the market as new listings in December, and the numbers have proven that to be correct.  But a few houses have come out, made a splash, and the sellers have done very well for themselves…

Some people like numbers.

Some people like anecdotal evidence.

So why don’t we look at both?

Last year, the month of November saw 6,519 sales, and that number dropped to 4,446 for the month of December.

That’s a 31.8% drop in sales from November to December, which is an astronomical drop-off, and yet for some reason, the number just “feels” low to me.

Maybe it’s because I’m thinking “houses” in this post.

Let’s re-run the numbers looking only at freehold properties.

November of 2014 saw 4,699 freehold homes sold, and that number dropped to exactly 3,000 in December.  That’s a drop of 36.2%.

But you know what?  That still “feels” low to me.

So let’s look specifically at the 416, shall we?

November of 2014 saw 1,436 freehold homes sold, and that number dropped to 823 in December.  That’s a drop of 42.7%.

That seems more like it.

Imagine that: 42.7% fewer freehold properties sold in December of 2014, in the 416, than in the previous month.

Tell me again that there’s no “Christmas Shut-Down” in our real estate market…

So armed with these numbers and this insight (or at least I’d hope would-be sellers have this info before they make a decision…) why would a property-owner list their house for sale in the month of December?

I sound like a broken record, telling my buyer-clients, “Don’t expect any Christmas miracles; the housing market is about to shut-down, and we’ll be waiting until January.”

It’s been incredibly slow through the first two weeks of December, and I think I’ve only shown five houses in total.  But you can’t show houses, if there are no houses to show.  No?

Perhaps my other uttered-too-often anecdote about the December market is with respect to the “chicken and egg” phenomenon that we see.  Sellers don’t want to list their properties for sale because the market is sluggish.  But the market is sluggish because there aren’t enough sellers.  Are the buyers not buying because the sellers aren’t selling?  Or are the sellers not selling because the buyers aren’t buying?

If it were my house, or my seller-client, I’d avoid the December market like the plague.

Having said that, what are the results like for sellers that do try their luck?

On Tuesday, there were three sales for freehold houses in E01, E02, E03 combined (see – told you it’s sluggish – only three sales!)

I can’t give you the addresses, so I’ll describe them:

1) Danforth Village, Semi-Detached, 2-Storey, 3-Bed, 2-Bath

Listed for $529,000
Sold for $625,123
118% Sale/List

2) East York, Detached, Bungalow, 2-Bed, 2-Bath

Listed for $639,900
Sold for $730,000
114% Sale/List

3) Riverdale, Semi-Detached, 3-Storey, 4-Bed, 3-Bath

Listed for $1,189,000
Sold for $1,275,000
107% Sale/List

Those are all three houses that sold on Tuesday.

All three sold in multiple offers.

All three sold for well over the asking price.

Now, you might point out that most single-family homes in the central core sell for over the asking price, because of the cruel, archaic, yet effective manner in which we Realtors “under-price” and “hold-back,” but none of these houses sold for less than they would have, could have, should have sold for in a traditional, hot market.

Maybe, maybe the third one surprised me a bit.  It was right next to Broadview Park in prime Riverdale, and a 4-bed semi-detached is often sought after.  But I wasn’t in this house, so I’ll be honest and say that the price is within the expected range, sight-unseen.  And perhaps the fact that it had zero parking held it back from what it could have been.

So here we have three houses, three sales, and three multiple-offer scenarios.

If anybody out there thought, “Maybe there will be some ‘deals’ in December,” you might have underestimated the market.

It’s very interesting; despite the sluggish market, with the absurd drop in activity, houses still get action, and nothing really slips through the cracks.

This is pretty darned late in the year to be selling, and yet one house in particular might be on the razor’s edge as the sellers are taking offers on December 21st!

Four days before Christmas.

Offers on a million-dollar house.

Is that a bit nuts?

Or a bit risky?

Now I know that Christmas is not the be-all, and end-all of our worlds.

Who can forget the infamous blog post from 2013, when some random caller, who wasn’t my client, wanted to see my rental listing at 7pm on Christmas Eve!  Man, did I take a sh!t kicking for that blog post from some readers!  As a raging atheist, who had a Jewish-wedding, and currently has a Christmas tree in his living room – I wasn’t suggesting that Christmas Eve was the most sacred night on our planet, but rather I found the request to be odd, as I later explained in that post, but I digress…

So am I nuts to think that taking offers on December 21st, four days before Christmas, is a bad idea and potentially risky?  Or is the seller nuts for doing so?

There’s a back-story to this property that makes the situation all the more interesting.

This property was listed for sale on December 1st at $1,049,900, with a hold-back on offers for December 8th.

I can’t say if the property received offers or not, but the next day, the listing was terminated.

And on December 14th, a different Realtor re-listed the property for $895,900, with offers to follow on December 21st.

So what do we make of this mess?

Did the sellers, pricing at $1,049,900 and holding-back offers, expect more than the list price?

And having fired their first Realtor, are they now listing $150,000 cheaper and still looking for more than that $1,049,900 list price?

Is this a different “strategy” on their part, with the same end-game in mind?

Do they think that taking offers on December 21st is the best way to achieve their already-unrealistic goal?

Alright, this isn’t just about Christmas, but rather the time of year.  Do we need to point that out?

December is a busy month.  There’s eight nights of Hanukkah, Christmas & Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve, and more office parties and holiday parties than you’d ever want to go to.  Friends and family come into town to visit, workplaces are slow and thus so too is the mind and body, and many of us end up in food comas at one point or another.

So if people are busier in December than they are at any other point in the year, and all the people they rely on (mortgage brokers, home inspectors, Realtors, contractors, et al), are busy too, then maybe, just maybe, those people who happen to be active buyers in the real estate market might not see the property you have listed for sale.

Couple the busy month of December with the fact that many active real estate buyers are already lowering their expectations for the month, and you’ll end up with a lot fewer eyeballs on your property than you would have in November or January.

As luck would have it, a client of mine is interested in the house I described above – the $895,900, formerly-$1,049,900 listing, and we just might be a player for the property on December 21st.  Pricing games, and wild expectations aside, maybe we wouldn’t be out of line to get our hopes up?

If the three sales in E01/E02/E03 on Tuesday are any indication, the market is still strong.

But December 21st?

Maybe Santa won’t be quite as giving that late in the year…