I am absolutely shocked at how slow the market is right now, both in terms of the number of sales, but also new listings.

There’s “nothing out there,” as we continuously say, while hundreds of properties sit on the market, and as we marvel when a hot new listing does hit the open market, albeit mistakenly, in my opinion, since every active buyer has his or her head in the sand.  Wait until after Labour Day, the consensus says.

In any event, we’ll get back to business next week on TRB, but as I soak in the last few days of the Idaho sun, have a gander at my last two videos from my 2015 series with the objectionably-long title.

As I mentioned in Monday’s blog, we actually filmed “The Discount Agent” about eight months previous, but it looked like a couple of eighth-graders filmed it on their handycam, circa 1996.

Another problem I was having early on was that I was asking people around my office to act in my videos (my assistant, my administrator, the part-timers…), and the results were awful.

Enter, Jared.  A guy that randomly showed up to play an extra during the “Real Estate Seminar” video, and who I knew we’d ask to be in our next video.

I know many home-owners, and some of you reading this right now, might see value in listing your home with a discount agent, and saving money on commission.

I don’t blame you.  It’s hard to turn down a $10,000 or $40,000 discount, and if I tell you, “As one of the top 100 out of 50,000 GTA Realtors, I’ll make you that money back, in quadruplicate,” there’s only so many ways I can try to quantify that.

But I’ve seen, first-hand, how awful the part-time, fly-by-night agents can be, and how quickly they’ll sell out their clients (it’s always fun going up against them when I’m on the buy side…), and so I once again thought I’d use the lowest-common-denominator approach in a video, and compare hiring a discount real estate agent, to hiring a discount laser eye surgeon.

I figured that a home is the largest sale the average person will ever make, and eyesight is probably the most important part of a person on which they can have elective surgery.

This is the longest of all my videos in this series at over five minutes, but I had fun with it, and Jared was hilarious.  Here’s the result:

In the fall of 2015, a lot of my buyers were caught off-guard by how quickly the market was moving.

The spring of 2015, and summer of 2015, were hot, but not insane.

Once the fall market hit, all hell broke loose, and buyers who wanted to “wait until it’s convenient” to see a property were constantly getting left behind.

So once again, I asked myself, “What if the whole world worked the same way as the Toronto real estate market?”

With properties selling in the proverbial blink of an eye, what if I showcased a series of every-day occurrences, happening with the same speed?

I took some heat for this online (who doesn’t?) with the market bears saying I was force-feeding, fear-mongering, and causing mania.  But in reality, I was really just trying to tell people, who didn’t know, or wouldn’t listen, how quickly the market was moving.

Here’s the result:

Okay, that’s it for me, folks!

Back in the office on Saturday, back to work on Monday.

I don’t expect much to happen in the market until Tuesday, September 6th, although I did see a couple of hot new listings in the past couple days, and for the life of me, I don’t know why the sellers are choosing to list now.

Anyways, I’ll be back with some new posts next week.

Ask your dinner date or golf partner this weekend: should Glen Abbey be designated “historical,” or should we allow houses to be built on the land to help with our growing housing crisis in the Golden Horseshoe?

I guess you already know how I’d answer.

Have a great weekend!