How Does a Recession Impact the Housing Market? There’s been a fair amount of contradictory analysis floating around out there this summer concerning whether Canada will follow our American cousins into an economic recession this year.  A quick Google search will show you exactly what I mean, with headlines like “Canada’s economy is headed for a recession” and “Here’s why experts say...

Waterloo Region as we know it today started out from the humblest of beginnings – a smattering of farming communities spread out across the central portion of the Grand River watershed in the early 1800s.  From there, we’ve grown to a total of over 625,000 residents, concentrated overwhelmingly in the major population centres of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge.  And, just as the Region...

Housing prices are coming down – so why are we seeing fewer showings? It’s a fair question. You’d think that after two years’ worth of price increase after price increase, weary and frustrated buyers would now be coming out in droves to take advantage of a cooling market. But while the buyer pool hasn’t necessarily disappeared altogether, the numbers do point (both statistically and...

We all know that nothing lasts forever; a ‘true-ism’ that applies within every realm of our material world. For many months it was the turn of homeowners to watch their property values climb up and up and up, and to cash in on record-breaking sale prices all over Southwestern Ontario. Meanwhile, for anyone else who found themselves on the purchasing side of a real estate transaction, the past two...

The Provincial Government has moved recently to introduce new legislation aimed at alleviating housing shortages in Ontario and stabilizing the cost of entry to our housing market. Bill 109, or the “More Homes for Everyone Act, 2022”, aims to ease financial pressures on homebuyers by acting to restrict the activities of real estate speculators, curbing predatory development practices, and working...

The first two months of 2022 have seen all manner of statistical precedents being smashed in the world of Kitchener-Waterloo real estate.  From record-high average sale prices to record-low average days spent on market, just trying to keep track of where things stand from the perspective of an outsider can be head-spinning enough – and when we factor in the uncertainty being generated by recent...

 It’s a historic benchmark – today, for the first time ever, the average sale price of a detached home in Kitchener-Waterloo is more than one million dollars.  The sheer pace of the price increase that our real estate market has seen since the summer of 2020 has been nothing short of breathtaking for both average residents and industry insiders alike.  While the...

Earlier this December, the staff and agents at Chestnut Park West saw the culmination of well over a month’s worth of hard work and planning when we hosted our fourth consecutive Winter Warmth campaign, here at Waterloo Town Square. Hundreds of our clients and friends (and their families) turned out to collect our gift of either a Christmas tree or wreath and, in turn, to make a donation of either food...

It’s a number that anyone who follows the real estate industry with any degree of regularity could see coming for months now, but somehow seeing it in print doesn’t make its realization any the less shocking: the average single detached home in Kitchener-Waterloo sold for nearly One Million Dollars ($997,654) in October. Some might try to write the million dollar mark off as more of a psychological...

Five weeks of promises and pledges are now behind us – with Canadians having just elected our 44th session of Parliament, we are once again left with a minority government in charge of determining the country’s direction for the next few years.  The Liberals managed to eek out the largest proportionate number of seats once more, with the Conservatives firmly in opposition and the balance of...