Top Five: Blog Posts Of 2022

Stories!

18 minute read

December 12, 2022

Have you had your company holiday party yet?

That’s usually the sign that you and your colleagues are ready to pack it in for the year.

Ours was last week and it did not disappoint.  That was the latest I’ve been out in years, which says something, for a guy that doesn’t like going “out.”

The Mcdonald’s drive-through on the way home was also a throwback.  I don’t think I’ve done that in decades.

Well, here we are, just about ready to close the books on the 2022 real estate calendar, and the last year is one giant blur.  I was signing holiday cards on the weekend and a few names popped up for which I thought this would be their first Christmas in their new homes, only to realize that those sales were from 2021.

It was a long, long year!

But I had a lot of fun here on Toronto Realty Blog as I always do, and I had even more fun sitting down to go through the year’s blog posts.

Being your own judge is always an interesting task, but I did get some input this year from my team, a few clients, and of course my mother, Moonbeam!

Here are the Top Five Blog Posts of 2022 as we see them…

 

 


 

 

#5: TRB Special Guest Posts: Chris Cansick, Matthew Morrison, & Tara Amina
April, 2022

Chris
Matthew
Tara

Wanna hear something kind of dark, for which I expect absolutely nobody to feel bad for me?

A colleague from another brokerage, who is a listing king, told me once, “I wish I had your blog.  You’ve got such a following, such loyal readers, a lead-generating machine.”

I told him that I envied him, on account of all his listings, and we agreed that “The grass is always greener on the other side.”

But when he told me, “The market could go up, down, or sideways, and that’s going to affect every agent out there except you,” I told him what I’ve told the members of my team, now and again…

I built a prison around myself, and now I reside in it.

It’s a little tongue-in-cheek, of course.  I’m not exactly complaining.  I love writing blogs and I love when I work on real estate transactions with like-minded individuals who read what I write, and decide to contact me.  But I’ve put myself in a position where I’m essentially a slave to TRB.

3,000 words; Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  Repeat.  And continue in perpetuity.

Nobody does what I do.  And that’s why I can never stop doing it.

When somebody suggests, “Just don’t post tomorrow, nobody will mind,” I look at them like we just met and they have no clue who I am.  Not blogging is simply not an option.  That’s just how it goes.

So when the idea came about for me to take my daughter, Maya, to London, England to see my brother and his family, I wondered just how in the hell I would do that.

Real estate agents take time off all the time.  I remember talking to a well-known agent years ago who said, “I’m going to Australia for three months,” and I thought about how far-fetched that would be for my life.

When I go to Idaho (although I haven’t been since 2018), I write blogs down there.  I work.  I take calls and do deals.  And on the trips I’ve taken since then – Florida, Collingwood, Picton, and Deerhurst, I worked the whole time.

But if I was going to head over to London with my daughter so she could see her cousins, Charlotte and Natalie, for a week and really enjoy the experience, I owed it to Maya to “be present” as they say.

My team and I planned and prepared for three weeks leading up to this trip.

I was nervous, and despite everybody on my team telling me, “It’ll be fine,” it was far from guaranteed.

The incredibly ironic part was: as I said goodbye on a Friday afternoon in April, I forgot my car keys and came back to my team’s area to find them putting out a fire.  No, not a metaphoric fire, like a tenant was mad that somebody showed up to their property unannounced, but a real fire!  For some reason, Adriana’s earbuds flamed up and were billowing smoke, and Chris picked up them up and threw them out the window while Tara and Sneha stood by, watching in amazement.

What a start to the trip!

Maya threw up on the airplane six times!  I know the exact number because she told me, over and over, without shedding a tear.  What a tough kid, honestly.  It was a miserable flight over there, but once we arrived, I was in Heaven for eight days.

A friend asked me recently, “When was the last time you were truly relaxed?”  I told her, “When I was in London with my brother and my nieces, riding bikes around Centre Parcs with my baby girl.”

It was truly magical.

And here on TRB, my team covered for me in phenomenal fashion.

Chris, Matthew, and Tara all wrote blog posts in my absence, and they were amazing.

All three of them will tell you that they don’t like writing.

The crazy thing is, Matthew is really good at it!  His post resulted in 38 comments from the TRB readers, although some were Matthew’s, responding to comments.  He’s a millennial so he needs “closure” on everything.  With this generation, when somebody says, “Good work,” the youngster needs to write back, “Thanks!” just to close the loop on it.

I very much enjoyed the first line in Tara’s post:

I don’t know David from high school, nor did I play baseball on his team… talk about a boys club, right?

All three of them did a great job.

And I hadn’t proofed these in advance!  I wasn’t allowed to!

Like the rest of the TRB readers, I read these when they were posted.  I recall having a coffee (which was served in a small bowl with no handles, without “pouring cream” as the Brits call it) in a quaint little cafe, reading Chris’ blog post a couple days after we arrived.  I looked forward to Matthew and Tara’s respective posts, and I was not disappointed!

That trip was possibly the best of my life and I think about it often.  I connected with my daughter and we created a special bond that will forever be a part of us.  My brother and I got to spend some true quality time together; the first since he moved there almost a decade ago.  And my nieces got to consistently reprimand their inappropriate and outspoken “Uncle Pipes” for every third comment that came out of his mouth.

None of this would have been possible without my team, their kind and caring natures, and their commitment to Toronto Realty Blog.

It also wouldn’t have been the same without the interaction from our loyal TRB readers, who commented on all three blog posts, interacted with Chris, Matt, and Tara, and asked great questions for which the team provided responses.

These blog posts might not have been your favourites of 2022, but they sure meant a lot to me, and they were the first of their kind here after fifteen years…

 

 


 

#4: Housing Affordability Task Force: My Two Cents
February 14th, 2022

Nothing says “Valentine’s Day” like three thousand words on a government report, right? 🙂

Alright, well, the date of the blog post was coincidental but the month of February was when the provincial government released the Housing Affordability Task Force‘s long-awaited report on the “crisis” in this province as well as recommendations on what action should be taken.

This quickly turned into a three-part blog series, as the theme seems to go in today’s “Top Five” list.

Here are the three parts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I’ve spent at least the last decade, likely more, clamouring about “housing supply” in the Toronto market, or rather the lack thereof.

I was the first person (that I know of…) chastizing the CMHC, Bank of Canada, and federal government for all of their demand-side policies and legislation that were aimed at “cooling the housing market” all those years.  Increasing minimum down payments, eliminating zero-down mortgages, shortening amortization periods, increasing CMHC premiums, implementing a mortgage stress test – all of the policies from about 2008 onward, which is when policies really started to fly as a result of the meltdown in the United States, were aimed at cooling demand.

But what about increasing supply?

Way back in 2010, I wrote a blog simply called, “Supply & Demand.”

I continued to write blog posts on this subject, over and over, but all the talk and all the policies were aimed at demand.

August 15th, 2016, I wrote: “Toronto’s Real Estate Problem: Simple Supply & Demand”

That was well in advance of the implementation of the mortgage stress test, which of course, was aimed at cooling demand.

I could cite a dozen other blog posts, but you get the picture.

Year after year, I cringed every time I watched our government trot out yet another policy change intended on addressing, helping, or cooling the housing market, knowing full well that it would have no impact.

Even today, after watching interest rates rise from 0.25% to 4.25% in a single year, we’re all aware that a massive influx of new housing supply is needed in the GTA to address the imbalance that still exists.  If we don’t want the average home price to double again in the next decade, there has to be more supply.

So back in February, when the provincial government’s Housing Affordability Task Force produced a 33-page report with 55 recommendations, I decided to sit down and read the report – three times, then provide my two cents on every single recommendation, right here on TRB.

The result was a 3-part blog series that didn’t exactly light the world on fire in the comments section of TRB, with a mere 25 comments posted by the TRB readers in total, but I would like to think that dedicating an entire week on TRB to this report encouraged people to read and understand.

Because that’s the problem: many people don’t want to understand.

Foreign buyers, speculators, flippers, Realtors, rich people – all the usual culprits responsible for the cost of housing in the GTA, so say the laymen out there.

And I have to wonder if your typical angy, basement-renting, anonynmous-commenting, fuck-the-rich-chanting resident of Toronto were to read the Task Force’s report, if that person would gain enough perspective to move off the position of “Fuck developers” and “Real estate agents are shit.”

The report overwhelmingly seemed to identify housing supply as the issue in our province, and while some of the recommendations were frothy, political candy, I think the report did its job.

I began my analysis of the report with my two infamous thoughts on politics:

1) Politics is not about serving the people.
2) There is no “long-term” in politics.

Lengthy explanations followed, which I hoped would serve as the undertone of, “We can only do what we can do, based on the system we have,” which is a very sad way of looking at government but one that can’t be overlooked.

I then examined all fifty-five recommendations, one-at-a-time, spending more time on some than others.

The first eleven recommendations were all to do with increasing supply, which I was absolutely delighted to see.

Exclusionary zoning, as-of-right housing, intensification, density, planning and approval were all words that dominated the first eleven recommendations.

And this is where you can see change really happening.

But by the time you got to the 13th recommendation, you started to see a pattern forming:

13. Limit municipalities from requesting or hosting additional public meetings beyond those that are required under the Planning Act.

By golly, the province is going after the city!

February’s Task Force report was a sign of things to come.

Look at what’s happened since then!

First, the provincial government introduced the “Strong Mayor Powers,” which is clearly Doug Ford’s way of forcing John Tory to pick a path forward and not simply rely on the old, “My vote only counts for one” excuse that’s enabled him to become the wet noodle that he is.

Second, the provincial government introduced the “Built More Homes Faster Act” which is a direct response to the Housing Affordability Task Force and their report.

Isn’t this the way the government is supposed to work?

Identify a problem.
Propose solutions.
Implement legislation.

I recognize that we all have different political leanings and allegiances, and that between NDP, Green, Liberal, and Conservative supporters, not everybody is going to agree with the Strong Mayor powers or the Build More Homes Faster Act.

However, I do think we can all agree that the Build More Homes Faster Act is the most significant piece of provincial legislation to address the housing crisis in the GTA.

And it all stemmed from the Housing Affordability Task Force and their report.

That’s why I’m so happy I dedicated three full blog posts to the topic in February, and why I think it’s one of the “Blog Posts of 2022,” even though it’s three.

Agree to disagree with our provincial government’s actions if you want, and I won’t blame you.

But nobody can deny the importance of the Task Force report.

Let’s all hope the government has chosen the right path for us, moving forward…

 


 

#3: Cleaning Up The Pre-Construction Condo Industry
September 19th, 2022

This was actually a three-part blog series.

I didn’t intend it to be a three-part blog series, but as I’ve learned over the years, it’s better to write from the heart and say what needs to be said than to try to make something “fit” within a prescribed range or narrative.

The result, when all was said and done, was a blog of 9,273 words that was split into three.

For those interested:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

My disdain for the pre-construction condominium industry can be traced back to the mid-2000’s, shortly after I started in this business.

Upon learning about the industry, researching how it works, and fine-tuning my understanding, I came to the conclusion that it made no sense.

That was frustrating.

But what was more frustrating was that not everybody felt that way.

In fact, many were clueless, and others actively promoted pre-construction condos as though they were a better real estate vehicle than resale.

By the early 2010’s, the “game” had completely changed.

Prices for pre-construction were higher than resale, which made zero sense, especially considering the risks.

But again, nobody would listen.

In 2011, I filmed this infamous video comparing cake to cake-mix, as an analogy for condos to pre-construction condo purchases:

Eleven years ago.

And still, most buyers ignored it, searching for get-rich-quick schemes, and real estate agents pumped the product in search of 4% commissions for walking their clients into a sales centre.

A few years later, I took another stab at the analogy, inventing something called “pre construction jeans” in what is probably my favourite and most infamous video:

The long-time readers are probably sick of this link since I end up posting it a few times per year, every year.

But this actually got people to notice.

I remember standing outside a property on Bedford Ave one day and a silver Audi drove by, in which the number-one downtown Toronto condo listing agent was sitting, as he shouted out the window, “Hey, do you know where I can find some pre-construction jeans?”

But people kept buying pre-construction condos like they were going out of style.

I wrote about the risks, the fallacies, and the fantasies, over and over, but they kept selling out.

I was one of the first to ever have the audacity to suggest that the Condominium Act, of 1997, needed updating:

September 1st, 2011: “Re-Write The Condo Act?”

But nobody cared.

Eventually, I stopped writing.  It was boring.

But when projects started getting canceled with regularity, and/or experiencing major material changes, it provided another opportunity for me to talk about pre-construction condos, but with a different narrative.

This is where it all started, for me:

April 27th, 2014: “North York Condo Developer Faces $30 Million Lawsuit”

Imagine buying a condo in a building with direct access to the TTC subway station, only to find out when the condo is done, that there’s no direct access?

That is how our pre-construction condominium industry works!

And as I wrote in this three-part blog series, it just got worse and worse.

I had a lot of fun with this series, as bad as the subject matter was.

My team and I compiled a master list of every condo that has been canceled (thank you, Urbanation), as well as a list of every newspaper article we could find on cancellations, dating back more than a decade.

In the second and third parts of the blog series, I detailed many of these cancellations, as well as the “reasons” offered by developers, and the reactions from buyers.

We relived Urbancorp as well as the infamous Museum FLTS which I think deserved to be canceled because of the dumb-spelling.  We talked about Cosmos as well as Iconica, and then went back to the well to talk about Cresford.

It was like a high-school reunion of failed condo projects and shoddy developers.

But it was a timeline of how we got to the point we’re at now, where legislators in this province actually want to do something about it.

In 2022, it became quite clear that the laws developers have been using for decades to get away with ridiculous business practices, are iron-clad, and that developers will always win.

This happened in January:

“Court Supports Home Buyers After Purchase Deals Cancelled”
Toronto Star
January 5th, 2022

Those equally as cynical as myself will know this lawsuit never had a chance.

The law is the law.

But laws can be changed, and so too can the enforcement of the existing policy.

This happened three months ago:

“Ontario Regulator Moves To Strip Builder Of Its License”
Globe & Mail
September 14th, 2022

And I believe this is just the start.

Say what you want about Doug Ford’s “Build More Homes Faster Act,” or his “Strong Mayor” legislation, or his idea to build on the Greenbelt.

But if there’s a government that’s finally going to change the rules that developers play by, it’s the one in power now.

I’ve been waiting for fifteen years to see the rules change and while I’m still not optimistic that we’ve seen the end of cancellations, cancellations/re-launches, massive material changes that go unpunished, absurd two-year occupancy periods, even more absurd hidden closing costs, and price fixing when the occupant elects to rent the unit, I do believe that the bad practices that have plagued this industry for the last two decades are now in the public eye.

That’s a good starting point for change.

 

 


 

 

#2: “Pack Your Bags: We’re Moving To The Yukon!”
February 22nd, 2022

Let me start by offering this:

Nobody from Toronto actually wants to move to the Yukon.

There.  I said it.

I didn’t explicitly say it when I wrote the post, and maybe that’s the problem.

I mean, in theory, some of us would like to.  It could serve as a fantasy during a really frustrating day, week, month, or even year in this boiling pot of a city that we call “home.”

Some of us would like to vacation there for a few days, just to see what it’s like.

But do any of us really want to move to the Yukon, full-time, for the rest of our lives?  Of course not!

That was the problem with the blog post that I wrote back in February, although to be honest, if I had said that from the onset, the Yukoners might have been angrier…

Did you read the post?

No?

Oh man, if you read one post from this list, make sure you read that one!

After fifteen years and nearly three-thousand blog posts, believe it or not, I sometimes have trouble finding timely topics here on TRB.  And it’s not just topics, but rather original or unique topics, because not every post can be “MLS Musings.”  People come to TRB for the stats, or the musings, or the in-the-trenches stories, but many readers like variety.

That’s why I wrote this blog post in the first place.  That, and the fact that this article appeared in the National Post:

“If You’re Joining The Urban Exodus, Don’t Look To Yukon For A Cheaper Life”
Shari Kulha
The National Post
February 16th, 2022

When I sat down to write “Pack Your Bags: We’re Moving To The Yukon,” I had no idea what I was about to run into.

For those who didn’t read the blog, here’s a choice comment:

Okay, well, not exactly friendly, but a far cry from this one:

Then again, that one pales in comparison to this one:

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Eventually, one of the TRB readers posted a comment asking where and how the Yukoners got ahold of this TRB feed, and one of the kinder Yukoners said that it popped up in his Google feed.

The reaction was so fierce and so immediate that it surprised me.  It surprised all of us.

The Yukoners hated the blog post, just as much as they hated Ontarians.  But as one Yukoner (who had no issue using her first and last name…) explained, they didn’t hate Yukoners as much as Albertans.

Man, what a morning it was, reading these comments!

The regular TRB readers tried to calm the waters, but it only got more furious.

Blog reader RPG, who is a long-time regular, said this:

“The writer of this article” is a Toronto real estate broker who writes about real estate as a hobby. He’s not encouraging Toronto people to move to Whitehorse. He’s just trying to expand the horizons of people who like reading and discussing real estate which is what many of us have been doing on this blog for the last ten years.

But it fell on deaf ears.

Ears made deaf by thick, fleecy ear-muffs, necessary to survive that Yukon cold!

Heres’ a response:

Oh, Sarah!

Read the article, Sarah!

Then read it again.  Then, just for good measure, read it a third time.

Now read this:

Nobody wants to move to the Yukon, Sarah.  It’s a fucking blog post!

Here’s the funny part about this blog from February and today’s blog: the Yukoners will be back!

Today’s blog post will be an early Christmas present in the Yukoners’ Google News feeds, and they’ll be back here today, spreading more joy, showing us how friendly a bunch they are.

My favourite comment was this one:

I don’t know if Sigruper was directing that at folks like Sarah, or just at the Yukoners in general.

I’ll admit, I got a real kick out of this post.

I never saw it coming, which is something that always gets my motor running.  I write blog posts Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and have for fifteen years.  I almost always know what kind of reaction I’m going to get, and yes, as some of you have mentioned in the past, I am often guilty of starting a fire and then running away.  But this post?  This tame blog post about houses for sale in the Yukon?  I thought I might get like 3-4 comments from the readers – and tame comments like, “I really like that wood-burning fireplace.”

Never in a million years did I expect this response.

And it made for one of my favourite blog posts of 2022. 🙂

 

 


 

 

#1: The Inevitable Discussion About Blind Bidding
April 25th, 2022

Why did I use the word “inevitable” in the title?

Well, I suppose it’s because I didn’t want to have this discussion or write this blog, but I knew it was inevitable.

There are certain real estate topics that you’d expect me to write about, and given the importance of these topics, that’s totally fair.  But sometimes, in an odd round-about way, there are topics that I’m so passionate about, I can’t stomach the idea of actually opining on them.

Does that make sense?

It’s not that I’m afraid of discussing them or that I don’t welcome opinions to the contrary, but rather I feel like I shouldn’t have to write about them, because what I would say in my blog post should already be obvious.

Yes, that’s it.  That’s a much better explanation.

It’s as though to explain it is to get down in the weeds with the people who understand it the least, and it’s the opinions of those who know the least that I can’t stand.

Here’s an analogy.

You watch baseball, right?  At least you’ve seen it on TV?

When you’re watching from the TV angle and a pitcher throws a ball way out of the strike zone, and a batter swings through it, your reaction is: “How could he swing at that?”

The TV angle of a pitcher throwing a baseball completely bastardizes what’s really happening.

On TV, it looks as though the pitcher is just throwing the ball.

If you’ve been there in person, standing next to a pitcher, or if you ever watch a pitcher warm up in the bullpen, you can fully appreciate that they’re actually whipping the ball.  Their entire body goes into that throw, their arm is like a rubber band, and the torque on that windup and follow-through is absurd.

If you, or I, or another person stood in the box and faced a basic 90 MPH pitch, or God forbid, a 102 MPH fastball, our reaction would be to move away, take cover, and probably crawl into the fetal position and suck our thumb.  You can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to stand in that box and see that pitch coming from 60-feet away.

But major league baseball players see 2,000 of these pitches every year.  And they don’t jump out of the box and take cover – they try to swing and hit the ball!

So when a 92 MPH slider comes in at a player, and they swing overtop of the pitch, looking foolish on TV, it’s common, and often automatic, for a viewer to say, “I can’t believe he swung at that pitch.”

But the viewer has no idea.

And sometimes, sorry to say, there are aspects of the real estate industry that the average person knows nothing about, and can’t possibly understand, and yet these people passionately argue their side.

Everybody’s entitled to an opinion, of course.

But I can’t offer an opinion on molecular biology because I have no idea what it is.  And when the masses complain that “blind bidding” is evil and should be banned, it bothers me because they don’t understand any of it.

These are the topics that bother me the most because most of the objection in society is from people who won’t take the time to learn the process.

In “The Inevitable Discussion About Blind Bidding,” the stance I took wasn’t so much that blind bidding isn’t bad, or shouldn’t be banned, but rather I outlined how the process of reviewing multiple offers takes place, and thus how it would be truly impossible to “ban” blind bidding.

In the end, I didn’t need to argue against the ban, because I showed that it would never work.

I walked through a scenario where multiple offers were submitted on a house, and then went through a detailed analysis of every possible attempt to eliminate the “blind” aspects of bidding.

Then I offered this:

I am 100% in favour of allowing listing agents to disclose the terms and conditions of competing offers in an effort to bring transparency to the process, but as I’ve demonstrated above, “banning blind bidding” is impossible because at many points during a revised process, subsequent actions will, in fact, be blind.

By all means, read the post!

But in lieu of reading, that comment above is all you need to know.

Any time an offer is submitted, or re-submitted, or re-re-submitted, there’s a blind element.  And to continuously inform every party of the contents of a subsequent offer would be like looking into a mirror ahead of you when there’s one behind you as well; it goes on forever and ever, like Pi.

Of course, an open auction on the front lawn of a house, like in Australia, is what people always suggest at this point.  But as I wrote in THIS blog post from 2018, most houses at auction in Australia don’t actually sell at auction.  It’s just a fantasy that frustrated Torontonians have, which is ironic, considering most Australians don’t like their own sale format.

I also offered this:

Any “solution” is going to open the door to other problems.  Unintended consequences are impossible to avoid.

I then suggested that the only way to truly eliminate all aspects of blind bidding was to have the government take over the process of buying/selling houses and develop some sort of auction platform.

But is this the same government that just lost $32 Billion in the largest government misallocation in Canadian history?

What?  Too soon?

My frustration with comments from the peanut gallery boiled over toward the end of what was already a lengthy blog post.

I included the following:

Here’s a letter through the Globe & Mail:

The excessive greed of realtors cries out to be reined in by politicians who really want to bring relief to all facets of a diseased housing market.  Rob Hawkins, Oakville, Ont.

These are the individuals that I speak of when I argue that many people don’t want to truly understand what blind bidding is, how it works, and most importantly, why it’s present in our market.

The greed needs to be “reigned in by politicians.”

“Politicians” have the answer for everything, don’t they?

This is the type of constituent that politicians salivate over!

I wasn’t taking offense because this person blamed Realtors, and I happen to be one.

I was taking offense because this reader was wrong to blame Realtors, who aren’t responsible for high housing prices, and because this reader was wrong by suggesting that politicians are the saviour-in-waiting.

In the end, the post produced 68 comments from the TRB readers.

The readers had their own debate in the comments section about what would, could, or should work, as some offered ideas, and others poked holes in those suggestions.

And the incredible irony is: since the market cooled, nobody has said the words “blind bidding.”

Real estate buzz-words come and go.  Just as “foreign buyers” dominated the conversation in 2017, the words “blind bidding” were hot in 2021 and remained that way into 2022.  But in the absence of a federal election, there’s no need for anybody to clamour about “blind bidding” anymore.  This was just a sexy piece of voter candy.

So will the government actually eliminate “blind bidding?”

No.

Not only because they can’t, as I explained above, but because the furvour has died down.

But when the market gets hot again, which it probably will be by the next election cycle, we’ll hear more about this.

Mark my words.  And bookmark this post…

 


 

Phew!

Apologies for the lack of brevity here, folks.  But every one of those blogs seemed important enough to command its own 800 – 1,000 words!

If there was another post that you felt should have made the cut, or even one that you enjoyed or found memorable, please post in the comments section below.

We’re back here on Wednesday with the “Top Five: Real Estate Stories of 2022.”

Written By David Fleming

David Fleming is the author of Toronto Realty Blog, founded in 2007. He combined his passion for writing and real estate to create a space for honest information and two-way communication in a complex and dynamic market. David is a licensed Broker and the Broker of Record for Bosley – Toronto Realty Group

Find Out More About David Read More Posts

Post a Comment

Your email address will not be published.

11 Comments

  1. Francesca

    at 11:18 am

    Great recap David. It’s hard to remember all your posts since there are so many in a year to choose from! It’s ironic how your number one post is relevant this year but pretty much every year since you have been writing your blog. I don’t think the topic of blind bidding will ever not be relevant in the GTA real estate market. Whether people like it or accept it is another story but I don’t see this process ever changing. Your reaction to your Yukon post was crazy. However tell me if I’m wrong but haven’t you gotten slack before when you analyzed other non GTA markets in the past ( with the insinuation of people moving there to escape our high prices)? People get so defensive it seems at the idea of people moving in to there city/province when in reality so few people who contemplate it actually go ahead and do it. Should we maybe be as angry or defensive towards all the people moving here for better jobs? There are probably way more people moving here from all over Ontario and Canada than out of the GTA despite our high real estate prices.

  2. London Agent

    at 12:07 pm

    I really enjoyed the blogs written by your team members this year and wouldn’t mind seeing that as a week long feature in subsequent years. Also, the idea that you would take a day off from writing a blog never even crossed my mind. Monday, Wednesday and Friday are as automatic here as NFL football on Sundays. What a nice trip down memory lane this was and while I don’t have a specific blog that I would have added to this list, I am clamouring for a “Top 5 Interactions with Realtors of 2022” blog post. Those are the stories that I find most entertaining and always enjoy reading about.

    1. David Fleming

      at 9:56 pm

      @ London Agent

      Are you getting rid of me???

      I always knew my team would organize a coup one day. I just didn’t see you leading it… ????

      1. London Agent

        at 9:55 am

        I would never! But you’ve gotta admit that they’ve earned a shot at a repeat performance!

  3. Daniel

    at 12:26 pm

    Great recap of some great posts!

    Thank you for another year of entertainment and insights.

  4. Ed

    at 2:20 pm

    Why not make it easier on yourself by keeping the posts under 1000 words instead of shooting for 3000 words.
    You might even find that the readers will leave more comments as a result, because let’s face it after 3000 words sometimes there is nothing else to add to the conversation.

  5. Sirgruper

    at 5:38 pm

    Thanks David. Your the Cal Ripken Jr. of real estate blogs. Keep it going.

    Your blog is part of my ritual Monday, Wednesday, Friday breakfast routine. Usually reading a blog and eating a bowl of cereal take a similar amount of time. The long ones require more cereal and Fridays there’s cereal left. If I gain weight, its your fault:)

  6. Katie

    at 6:30 pm

    David you talked a lot about NIMBY’ism in 2022 and I think that’s an important subject especially in the context of the provincial government looking to stop city councillors from being controlled by a handful constituents who are against developments in their area.

    You did several features on the proposed condo in Leaside and I think that puts some names and faces to NIMBY’ism. I very much enjoyed those posts.

    1. David Fleming

      at 9:55 pm

      @ Katie

      Don’t worry – these will be covered in Wednesday’s post! I also enjoyed this topic. Er, um, I mean I enjoyed exploring it but I didn’t enjoy witnessing the entitlement of certain NIMBY’s first-hand. I remain astonished but also confused as to where this entitlement comes from…

  7. Dan

    at 8:11 am

    I definitely didn’t see that post on blind bidding but it’s definitely worthy of a top five!

    I assume it was a more contentious topic back when the market was on fire. But the post could age well. When the market comes back there will be more calls to “fix” the system.

  8. Ace Goodheart

    at 1:42 pm

    RE: Blind bidding – they could do it like it is done in Australia – if you want to auction a house, you do so, in front of the house, with an auctioneer, and people bid on the house, openly. The highest bid wins.

    RE: Housing affordability task force: Never trust a politician to solve a problem. The results are almost comical. Ontario’s “housing crisis” (which is actually an interest rate crisis, rapidly being resolved all by itself) – the solution, allow developers to build anything, anywhere they like, for free. The market will take care of the rest. Or on the other side of things, go full out communist, and tax people’s houses out from under them. The only good housing, is social housing (just ask any Cuban).

    Or how do we resolve a grocery price crisis? Politically? The high price of groceries is caused almost exclusively by Trudeau’s carbon tax (which exponentially increased the input costs for farmers and food producers, and also the costs of transportation). The solution – attack grocery stores and accuse them of profiteering, hold a parliamentary inquiry, and stage an unprovoked and incredibly unfair attack on Galen Weston, of all people, for no reason and with no evidence. No one mentions farmers getting like five and six figure bills for carbon tax, or the fact carbon taxed diesel costs $2.50 per litre.

    There is never going to be a time when a politician is able to solve a problem. That is not what politicians do.

Pick5 is a weekly series comparing and analyzing five residential properties based on price, style, location, and neighbourhood.

Search Posts