# Frantic Home Buyers



## sags (May 15, 2010)

For those who don't read Garth Turner's blog regularly, he posted an amusing, but troubling story a couple of days ago.

There were 300 people lined up,...100 got in the door.....and 48 of them bought up all the homes to be developed, as fast as they could sign the offers and cheques.

Not actual homes..........but homes on paper that will be built in the next couple of years.

On average..........1.3 million dollars..........spent in an average of 16 minutes each.

Wouldn't you want to at least see a finished home from the builders? 

Wouldn't you want to spend the time to check the fine print on the contracts?

People have gone absolutely bonkers over real estate.

It is a feeding frenzy anywhere near the GTA.

Everywhere else in Ontario...........people shake their heads.

http://www.greaterfool.ca/2014/06/09/fear-factor-2/


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## indexxx (Oct 31, 2011)

I think it's really sick that real estate has turned into this- no offence to people who think otherwise or are acting on it, but I've always believed that a home is meant to be just that- a HOME, not a way to desperately make as much money as possible. Vancouver used to be a great place but this activity has ruined it. I feel an average hard-working Canadian should be able to afford a place to live without killing themselves to be a slave to their mortgage. That's my rant for the day.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

it's the culture these days. Because everyone is assuming that real estate in larger metropolitan centres will continue to esculate and buyers can flip their purchases to turn a profit,
(after living in it forone calendar year to satisfy CRA). They will take the risks that the money will be held in a trust fund by the developer to be used to actually build their unit...
not squandered with the developer going bankrupt after squandering it.



> It’s not so much that these people are nuts, but that they represent the mainstream belief real estate, even secured with deep debt and bought in extreme haste, is utterly safe. That they were manipulated and goaded is moot. That this is now common is terrifying.


Let's face it..it is tempting on a 500K+ condo or townhouse..asssuming it is completed 2 or 3 years from now. Move in, take out a mortgage for a 1 year term,
live in it for at least 11 months as principle residence, put it up for sale, renew the mortgage for another 1 year term..sell..reap a handsome profit..
.......repeat.


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

Franctic "home" buyers??? Sound like gamblers to me .. how exciting when the bubble bursts. :rolleyes-new:


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## KaeJS (Sep 28, 2010)

This is the new norm, if you ask me.

It's going to continue.

Eventually, however, you are all correct. It will pop. But I don't think it's coming soon. I say we've got years of this to go. Maybe 2020.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Beaver101 said:


> Franctic "home" buyers??? Sound like gamblers to me .. how exciting when the bubble bursts. :rolleyes-new:


Maybe..right now with low mortgage rates, every ones getting on the bandwagon..some of it is "new" Chinese money as all this proposed development is going to take place in the Markham area..predominately a Chinese
"enclave"... As Confucius probably would tell us today "We are living in interesting times".



> This is a new development of 48 homes in the GTA’s distant Markham, near Buttonville airport, slated to become a giant subdivision of singles, semis and condos.


Now that being said..what do the builders do with street numbers such a s 4, 44, 444, etc.... or apt #4, floor #4..

*Number 4 in Chinese culture brings bad luck.*


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

carverman said:


> Maybe..right now with low mortgage rates, every ones getting on the bandwagon..some of it is "new" Chinese money as all this proposed development is going to take place in the Markham area..predominately a Chinese
> "enclave"... As Confucius probably would tell us today "We are living in interesting times".
> 
> Now that being said..what do the builders do with street numbers such a s 4, 44, 444, etc.... or apt #4, floor #4..
> ...


 ... Confucius was a wise-philosopher but too bad, no one listens to him these days. 

Re the #s, they can be "re-arranged" to 4+4 = 8 which is considered "lucky 8" ... all in the superstitious-head I say. Weren't the developers skipping the number 4 entirely and replacing them with 8 in the homes they were selling? Imagine, the whole street named Eighth Street is numbered like this 8, 18, 28, 38, etc. or maybe 8a, 8b, 8c, etc.? Ah, welcome to the Eighth Community too! :biggrin:


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## Moneytoo (Mar 26, 2014)

sags said:


> For those who don't read Garth Turner's blog regularly, he posted an amusing, but troubling story a couple of days ago.
> 
> There were 300 people lined up,...100 got in the door.....and 48 of them bought up all the homes to be developed, as fast as they could sign the offers and cheques.


Before discovering Garth Turner's blog a few months ago, I read Charles Hanes' blog - who claimed to be the inventor of this pressure-selling technique: 

_I've got to plead guilty that I was one the original architects of this selling approach back at 1001 Bay St., when I was called in by a very inexperienced developer to help save a sinking ship. We built the presentation center intentionally to have a very small, cramped waiting area without closets for those that we'd been stacking up for weeks to get in and buy. You could literally sense the anxiety when the doors first opened!

We allowed groups of no more than 10 to enter into a second room where a beautiful scaled model sat showing this to-be future residential condo and had a professional speaker give the overview on the building while the sales people waited in another room. The rest of the buyers remained crammed in the waiting area with their winter coats. This was specifically to put them off of their game plan and make them vulnerable to our sales tactics.

Following the presentation at the model, the doors opened and the herd was navigated into the large open area with floor plans on the wall where we met them. "Did you bring your cheque book" was always the opening questions and if the answer was no we simply turned to our second appointment in that time slot.

If they had brought their cheque book, the follow-up question was: "is anyone else involved in the buying decision" and again if the answer was yes and that person was not there, we would tell them there was nothing that we could do for them.

It wasn't pretty but it was disappointingly successful._

http://simplycondos.blogspot.ca/2013/10/is-this-good-time-to-invest-in-toronto.html?m=0


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## My Own Advisor (Sep 24, 2012)

Low rates are making a mess out of our RE economy.

Just raise rates by 1-2% and see how many people line up. 

I just don't get why rates aren't going up at least 25 points, this would be a great thing overall but I doubt it will happen until 2015 or 2016. Makes me wonder what I should do when my mortgage term is up for renewal. Maybe go with a short-term fixed rate under 3% if I can get it.


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## atrp2biz (Sep 22, 2010)

We used to live in Richmond Hill. Our address number was 6 and we were between 2 and 8. Further down the street it went 40, 42, 42A, 46.



carverman said:


> Now that being said..what do the builders do with street numbers such a s 4, 44, 444, etc.... or apt #4, floor #4..
> 
> *Number 4 in Chinese culture brings bad luck.*


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Beaver101 said:


> ... Confucius was a wise-philosopher but too bad, no one listens to him these days.
> 
> Re the #s, they can be "re-arranged" to 4+4 = 8 which is considered "lucky 8" ... all in the superstitious-head I say. Weren't the developers skipping the number 4 entirely and replacing them with 8 in the homes they were selling? Imagine, the whole street named Eighth Street is numbered like this 8, 18, 28, 38, etc. or maybe 8a, 8b, 8c, etc.? Ah, welcome to the Eighth Community too! :biggrin:


You should work for the city planning dept. :biggrin: That is going to be very confusing. Generally speaking the street is arranged with odd number houses on one side and even on the other. Now I'm not sure if that will open up a
can of worms for both the city and the people living there...what about postal codes...how suspicious are they about postal codes. Imagine L3P 0A4 (there is no L3P 0A4 the numbers go form 0A3 then 0A5 (skipping 0A4), so somebody
has already made an objection and maybe the post office obliged. Imagine deliverie ending up at the wrong house....we did have a good system..now it's going to get messed up because of cultural differences..

Package needs to go to #9 ..driver looks at 1 2 3 ....5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 ..18..28.....38.....I'm confused already and I'm not working for UPS or the post office. 8a to 8z then what 8aa to 8zz or do they use Chinese characters to
get around that?


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

carverman said:


> *You should work for the city planning dept. *:biggrin: That is going to be very confusing. Generally speaking the street is arranged with odd number houses on one side and even on the other. Now I'm not sure if that will open up a can of worms for both the city and the people living there...*what about postal codes...how suspicious are they about postal codes. Imagine L3P 0A4 *(there is no L3P 0A4 the numbers go form 0A3 then 0A5 (skipping 0A4), so somebody has already made an objection and maybe the post office obliged. Imagine deliverie ending up at the wrong house....we did have a good system..now it's going to get messed up because of cultural differences..
> 
> Package needs to go to #9 ..driver looks at 1 2 3 ....5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 ..18..28.....38.....I'm confused already and I'm not working for UPS or the post office. 8a to 8z then what 8aa to 8zz or do they use Chinese characters to get around that?


 ... maybe I should, in my next life if not an MD ... heard it's a good paying-job to be on the city's planning/adjustment committee. I'm sure there is no problem for the developers in getting an "unique" address for those residents for a "special" fee -just look at all the condos (30 floors and up) going up in the City of Glass aka TO.

Re the postal/UPS - no problem with that and no need for Chinese characters. By the time the houses are built, those beautiful stoopid community boxes will be implanted on the 8th Street in Community 8 in Markham and all the mail gets dumped (delivered) there. If the postman must sort the mail, then there're the 8a, 8b, 8c, etc. mail slots or UPS deliveries on address 8A, 8th Street, Community 8, Markham, ON. :biggrin: Now about the existing residents' protests, can't figure that out so just refer them to the developers/city.


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## tygrus (Mar 13, 2012)

The idea of buying a condo to live in and then sell with a massive profit is just that...a nice idea.

The reality is something else.

I tried 4 condo pre-build flips and the results were mixed at best. I bought 2 in Calgary and 2 in the Okanagan. The first in Calgary was in 2006 just as the market was taking off. I made about $70k on that flip and claimed it as principle residence after holding it for almost a year.

The rest were disasters. The two in the Okanagan took years to sell and in the meantime I had to stick shady renters in there to cover the costs until the sale. The renters helped pay the bills but they also made it harder to sell the place working around them for showings and hoping the place was kept clean. I finally sold one for about $20k less than I paid but the relief of getting rid of it was worth it. The other one I sold on assignment to a friend of mine, again for about $20k less than I paid. After that experience, I walked on my last condo deal in Calgary and the company didn't come after me but I lost my deposit. 

Never again would I embark on such folly.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Beaver101 said:


> .
> Re the postal/UPS - no problem with that and no need for Chinese characters. By the time the houses are built, those beautiful stoopid community boxes will be implanted on the 8th Street in Community 8 in Markham and all the mail gets dumped (delivered) there. If the postman must sort the mail, then there're the 8a, 8b, 8c, etc. mail slots or UPS deliveries on address 8A, 8th Street, Community 8, Markham, ON. :biggrin: * Now about the existing residents' protests, can't figure that out so just refer them to the developers/city*.


Well as they say Beav...you can always find a solution for anything. Yes, confusing house numbers will not be a problem for Canada Post in the future. They will just sort the mail so that they can dump it into the super mailbox
and let the intended recepients sort it out themselves..I already have a taste of what is to come these days when I get mail for my house number...but the street is wrong. Obviously reading english street NAMES is no
longer a skilled requirement at the Post Office.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

tygrus said:


> I tried 4 condo pre-build flips and the results were mixed at best. I finally sold one for about $20k less than I paid but the relief of getting rid of it was worth it. The other one I sold on assignment to a friend of mine, again for about $20k less than I paid. After that experience, I walked on my last condo deal in Calgary and the company didn't come after me but I lost my deposit.
> 
> Never again would I embark on such folly.


Timing ...(based on whether real estate is HOT (or Not) is everything.


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

My Own Advisor said:


> Makes me wonder what I should do when my mortgage term is up for renewal. Maybe go with a short-term fixed rate under 3% if I can get it.


If I had a mortgage I would go for the 4-5 year locked in rates that are 2.77 -2.99% ,I locked in at 3.49% for 5 years about 4 years ago on a rental and I was kicking myself for paying that extra .5% but then I just have to think back to what we paid in 1991.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

marina628 said:


> If I had a mortgage I would go for the 4-5 year locked in rates that are 2.77 -2.99% ,I locked in at 3.49% for 5 years about 4 years ago on a rental and I was kicking myself for paying that extra .5% but then I just have to think back to what we paid in 1991.


Marina..you got so much now you shouldn't be complaining about a mere 0.5%...isnt the mortgage tax deductible on a rental (investment income)?:biggrin:


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## DayTek (Sep 26, 2013)

This was the case with a new builder in our area. People were buying up to a year in advance. Houses were already built by the time the model homes opened - I wrote about our experience with that in this thread a few months ago: http://canadianmoneyforum.com/showthread.php/17313-Model-Home-Horror

I could not buy a home without seeing at least the model home first. But honestly, I can not see us moving for a long time, if ever. You can't find simple family homes like ours any more and we've had hardly any problems with ours over 8 years.


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

carverman said:


> Marina..you got so much now you shouldn't be complaining about a mere 0.5%...isnt the mortgage tax deductible on a rental (investment income)?:biggrin:


Carverman No mortgages at all now.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

marina628 said:


> Carverman No mortgages at all now.




Good planning Marina....still got those diamond investments?

Here's some lyrics from a Paul Simon song..from his album Graceland (Presley's estate)



> People say she's crazy
> She got diamonds on the soles of her shoes
> Well that's one way to lose these
> Walking blues
> Diamonds on the soles of her shoes


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

Yes I wear them every day Carv


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## OurBigFatWallet (Jan 20, 2014)

tygrus said:


> The idea of buying a condo to live in and then sell with a massive profit is just that...a nice idea.
> 
> The reality is something else.
> 
> ...


I've heard flipping a condo can be pretty tough. Especially if construction is bad, as it seemed to be during the last boom in Calgary in 2006. What buildings did you buy in ?


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