The Real Estate Podcast

Understanding the Fall Real Estate Market | The Real Estate Podcast EP303

In this episode of The Real Estate Podcast, Ariel and Chris discuss the fall real estate market and what you can expect as we approach the end of the year. They share valuable tips on how to prepare your home for sale, insights into market trends, and why the fall season is unique for buyers and sellers alike. Join us for a deep dive into the latest trends, tips, and strategies to navigate the busy fall market and make the most of your real estate journey. ************************ 0:15 – Intro 1:37 – Real Estate Market Dynamics as Fall Approaches 03:08 – Psychological Effects of the Fall Season on Real Estate 03:50 – Preparing Your Home for Sale Before the Holidays 05:02 – The Importance of Home Presentation 6:50 – Predictions for the Fall Real Estate Market 09:03 – Interest Rates and Their Impact on the Market 10:20 – The Importance of Proper Pricing 11:29 – Quick Market Changes and Their Implications 11:55 – Key Tips for Selling Your Home in the Fall 12:15 – Common Seller Mistakes: Smells and Being Home During Showings 15:02 – Tips for Selling Your Home in the Fall Market 17:16 – Seasonal Decor and Home Presentation Tips 19:57 – Getting Photos Done in the Summer 22:15 – Outro/recap ************************ Want more real estate podcast discussions? Watch it here: youtu.be/uLhNb8fdHt4 Listen to it here: http://www.soundcloud.com/ktrealty Catch clips and highlights of the show here: http://www.instagram.com/kormendytrott ************************ Our Social: Instagram: www.instagram.com/kormendytrott  YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/kormendytrott  Facebook: www.facebook.com/kormendytrott  Twitter: www.twitter.com/KormendyTrott Soundcloud:http://www.soundcloud.com/ktrealty  LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/ktrealty  Pinterest: www.pinterest.ca/KormendyTrott  TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@kormendytrott?lang=en ************************ In 2011, Ariel Kormendy and Adrian Trott formed The Kormendy Trott Team, now often referred to as KT (thanks to our logo!). The foundation of KT is built on providing unmatched value and attention to detail in everything we do. From our ever-expanding, comprehensive list of exclusive services to our expertly trained team, you will receive the highest level of care throughout your entire real estate journey. Originally a team of two in Milton, Ontario, the KT Team has grown into a large team of exceptional REALTORS®, a client-care department, and now includes KT media, KT Commercial and KT Property Management to provide our clients with a complete lineup of genuine, professional, and proven services across Halton Region, Peel Region and the surrounding Regions within the Greater Toronto Area. We’d appreciate it if you’d subscribe and follow us for behind-the-scenes footage, real estate tips, industry secrets, exclusive listings, KT Confidential - the real estate podcast, and more!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 02 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

- People that are home during showings? - Yeah. - Why you want to be a home during a showing is beyond me. - First of all. - Sure. - It gives you the buyers-- - Super awkward. - Oh, it's the worst. You can't have a candid conversation. You're tiptoeing around the house. You're whispering. Today on the real estate podcast, Ariel and I will be talking about the fall real estate market, what you can expect, and we also give you some tips on how to get your home ready. (upbeat music) - Welcome to the real estate podcast. Your go-to source for raw, unfiltered stories and expert tips. Whether you're a buyer, seller, tenant, landlord, or realtor, join us as we dive into the world of real estate. (upbeat music) - Well, Christopher. Welcome to the real estate podcast. - I'm excited. This intro has got me pumped up. - Yeah, you like the Jenny G intro? - Yeah, it's great. She's laughing at the background. - The way the buyer is very distracting. - It is. I actually think we should mic them up and have them chirping on the podcasts. - Oh, well, when you were filming your last podcast, I was watching from the media department and I feel like Ian should have a button because his chime-ins are hilarious. - Yeah, yeah. That'd be a good idea. - It could be a little distracting, maybe. - A little bit. So it's been a while since you've been on. Do you want to talk about what's going on with Christopher these days? - Oh, not really, but kids head down, grind it out. - So it's Labor Day. - Crazy. - Summer's over. - Like to me, like this is like the kickoff to the fall. - Yeah. - Kids back to school, finally. - Kids are back to school. - This is almost like the final push for our year end in real estate, really. - Yeah, well, as a realtor, you think about closings, right? - 90 days out, right? - 60 to 90 days is a typical closing for any home purchase or sale, that's typical. - Right, can be shorter, can be longer, but. - And September, right into October, is usually the cutoff of our year because our year goes based on closings. - Right. - So if it closes in 2024, it counts. If it, if you do the deal in 2024, but it closes in 25, it's now a deal for the next year. So for us, from an accounting standpoint, we've got about six weeks left, something like that. - Yeah, lucky if we're six weeks. - So those two things combined, Labor Day, kids back to school, kind of the year end, brings up our topic for today, right? And it's something that you've been talking about quite a bit in the last week or so, is the fall market. - I feel like there's almost a psychological effect in the fall, much like the spring. It's seasonality wise, it's a very busy time in real estate. The falls or leaves are changing, temperatures changing, people's mindsets are geared towards if they're gonna be supplying reselling, let's do it before the winter weather hits, which is a big one. No one likes to be moving in January or February. So it's a very busy time for real estate, but it's also a little bit more unique. The pressure's on for a lot of people to get things done before the year ends. - Yeah, there's definitely the mindset that people want to get the kids back to school, right? Because during the summer months, if you have kids, you're very busy with all kinds of extracurricular things that you're not typically busy with during the school year. - Vacations and cottages and spamming kittens. - Yeah, everybody wants to take advantage of the nice weather. So now that it's starting to cool down, kids are back in school. A lot of people start their shift. They start focusing now on, let's get the home ready to sell. Let's start getting back out to open houses or get out into the market and hopefully get into the house before the holiday season. - Right, that's the big push I feel like right now is people want to get settled before the holidays. And people like to entertain at their new homes, like how nice is it to have your new home, that's maybe a freshly painted or just a bigger space and entertain family in that new, bright, shiny home. - Yeah, a lot of people want to kind of combine the housewarming, showing off too, right? - Sure, yeah, sure. Whether it's a, whether you're a first-time home buyer or it's your 10th home, everybody likes to come and see your new home. And people like to entertain, people like to show them their new digs. - I don't know if you do. - So that goes hand in hand. - I don't know if you do this, but I feel like I do it more in the fall, depending on the client obviously, but I always like to point out, or I have a tendency to point out where the Christmas tree is going to go in the home. And I feel like that's a big deal for a lot of people. - Yeah, if you're the type of home that has a good size Christmas tree or like in our house, we cut down a tree. - Yeah. - And I'm always measuring it to make sure we're getting the right tree for the right spot in the house. But I'm always limited because, well, we have nine-foot ceilings. - Right. - But, you know, you gotta leave a little bit of a buffer at the top. - It's a star angel or a decoration. - Yeah, all that stuff. So we're limited to an eight-foot tree. If I had a nice cathedral front room, you know, like a lot of homes, 2,500 to 3,000 square feet. - Has a vaulted ceiling in that front room. - They have a vaulted ceiling in the front room or even in the family or living room area. And those often make a great spot for, and, you know, knowing your wife, if you had a 25-foot ceiling, you'd have a 25-foot tree. - That is quite possible. You've seen our Halloween decorations. - Yes, exactly. So, again, it's really that push for that season, for that cutoff for a lot of people. So let's talk a little bit about that. Let's talk, well, let me ask you a question. We haven't talked about this before we started filming. - Yeah. - What's your prediction for this fall season? - Well, the fall is always busy, so I feel like there's gonna be a bump in the market. Usually there is more people looking. There's more inventory, which usually means a little bit more robust market. We're rates down and projected to potentially keep going down. It's gonna be a busy fall, I think. There's been a bit of a slowness in the market over the summer, and eventually, that's gonna snowball and pick up. - You see, the summer for me was interesting because we had a fantastic July, our best July on record. And August was very strong as well. And those two months, typically, we do a little bit less volume. It goes hand in hand. The team is taking vacations. The clients are typically on holidays. - We're dragging people out. - Dragging people out. They don't wanna go and look at a home on a Saturday 'cause they're going to a cottage or Canada's Wonderland or whatever. - Right. - But what's interesting is that we've seen peaks and valleys through the inventory that's available. - Mm-hmm. - There is quite a bit of inventory on the market. There is gonna be more coming. And those waves of buyers have caught kind of matched, mated. - Right, with the inventory fluctuations. We've seen fluctuations of buyers coming in and out of the market. Maybe it's interest rate related. But what I'm expecting is for the fall season that we're gonna get started a little bit earlier. So in a couple of weeks, I think we will see more activity from buyers coming out of the woodwork. We will see more new listings coming up. So just to your point there, there's always extra activity that happens this time of year. And I think with the interest rate reductions coming, hopefully, that's one of my predictions. We will see additional interest rate reductions. That will stimulate the market. And in terms of pricing, I don't know what to expect. - Well, it's like a wave. Usually what happens if we see like the interest rates affect the buyers first. They get ahead of the sellers. Prices have a little bit of a bump because inventory is a little bit lower relative to the buyers out there. And then everyone rushes to get their homes on the market. So which is typical. And then the price is kind of stabilized a little bit from there. That's a trend we saw early on in the year. Again, a little bit in the summer. And I expect we're gonna see that same trend now in the fall. And then probably again in the spring. - What's interesting, and I think we've observed that with a few of our listings recently, is there are buyers out there. And when a new home comes on the market, it can spur activity. - Absolutely. - So one of Adrian's recent listings sold in a day with six offers on it in Burlington. - Yes. And you look at the market in that neighborhood, there are homes that were sitting on the market and did not sell and have not sold. And all of a sudden a home that's well presented, well marketed, well priced. You talked to me about pricing earlier today. How important that is to make sure you're hitting the right price point. But my point here is new inventory is gonna come on in September and October because people wanna sell in the fall, take advantage. They wanna buy and move before the holiday season, before the end of the year. So new inventory will bring new buyers, it'll bring existing buyers that are looking out a little bit more. And it just starts that snowball of fashion. - And the market changes so quickly. I mean, we've seen it recently is week to week. It can be a very, very perfect market. - It's pretty crazy this year how the market is up and down from week to week. - And you see that in the analytics on broker bay and the showings. So one week you have a market that's very robust. Do you have lots of showings out there? And the next week it dries up completely. It's very, very unique in terms of what we've seen historically. - Yeah, and it's hard to predict 100%. - So the key there is if you're selling your property and regardless of when you're listing it, what we've identified this year is that you really have to make sure that your home is properly presented. - That's huge. I mean, you did a, you had a post the other day. - All the way, yeah. - Or a couple of weeks ago, whatever it was on, it was like a quick dip. - Yeah, I just had peeves and I think, but it speaks to the market a lot of the times. I mean, you're in a time. - Hang on, I wanna talk about, okay. - I wanna talk about your post for a second. - What were the, 'cause you mentioned three of your pep peeves. - Yeah, the first one was just smells in the house. - Right, so if you walk into a home and it stinks, - Yeah. - Immediately turns you off. - Good smells and bad, like my point is good smells and bad smells. - Any kind of smells. - Yeah, I mean, last night's dinner, air fresheners, I was in a house yesterday and smoke right away. - Ooh, that's bad. - And it wasn't in the house, but they smoked on the porch. So when you end on the front and back porch. So there's two areas in the hall where-- - This is what smokers don't understand, yeah. If you're a smoker and you're not smoking in the house, God bless you, but you smoke in the garage, you smoke-- - It carries over. - In the back, you smoke in the front porch, whatever. It lingers on your clothes, it lingers on your fingers and it, well, the window coverings immediately in the garage, the door sales are a fabric. - So if you are gonna smoke, do not smoke in the garage. - It carries. - The dry wall absorbs it. - You see Jennifer kind of listening in there. - Yeah. - The dry wall absorbs it. - Doesn't matter if the garage door is opened. - The paint, yeah. - The weather sealing, even the concrete, because the concrete is porous and it will absorb it. So if you're gonna smoke, I don't know, go for a walk in the park, you know what I mean? - Well, going back to your-- - But smokers don't care, it's their home, I mean, they can do as they please. - They just know it affects the value. I mean, we use car days, smoke is in a car, just good luck selling it, right? - Yeah. - So smells big pet peeve. People that are home during showings. So if you're gonna sell your house, why you wanna be home during a showing is beyond me. First of all, it gives you the buyers-- - Super awkward. - Oh, it's the worst. You can't have a candid conversation, you can't, you're tiptoeing around the house, you're whispering. So it's just a bad feel, like it feels like you're in someone else's house where the whole point of going to a showing is creating that emotional attachment and you want to feel like it's your home, right? This is what we preached to our sellers is to make it feel warm and inviting and having people create that emotional attachment as soon as you walk in the door. - You're greeted by some stranger who just has a frumpy face and just goes off to the room. - Even if the seller is very accommodating and lovely, it's awkward. - It's awkward. - It's super awkward. - We don't see it that often though. - Well, I mean, you know where we are seeing it is a paint a picture for you guys. If a home's been on the market for, let's say 90 days. So it's been on the market for three months, which is not unheard of currently. - No. - Home's been on the market three months. Sellers getting a little bit frustrated because over the course of three months, they've had to wake up, make sure the home is clean. If they know a showing is scheduled, they have to make the beds. Hopefully they're doing all this. - They've reduced the home several times in price and they're not happy. - They've probably reduced the price to try and invigorate some activity. So they're getting frustrated. They're not super happy and an appointment comes in. Let's say it's five o'clock and appointment comes in for seven o'clock that evening, so two hours from now. And they're like, well, yeah, they can come, but we can't leave or maybe it's during the day and the seller works from home. We do see that. - I see that quite a bit. And I mean, at the same time, I mean, there's private rooms in the public library, which you can go to for free, there's Starbucks. I mean, there's options to get out of the house. - Sure. - And then what was my last one? I forget. - I don't know, you had smells. - Yeah. - Seller, seller leaving. - Oh, don't look it up. - Oh, man. That was a while ago now. - Go ahead. - Go ahead and follow Chris on Instagram @chrisbehe. - Chris, CB. - CB he. - CB he. - CB he. - Ah, I messed up. - Yeah, that's good. - Sorry. - Who's Chris Behe on Instagram? Is there a Chris Behe? - I'm sure there is. Oh, I would have had it. - Yeah. - CB he on Instagram. So let's talk a little bit about some tips if you are selling in this market, in the fall market. - Yeah, so I think that, I mean, selling in the fall is really, it's a lot of regurgitation from other seasons. I think your home needs to be presented. - Well, tips that we, yeah. Talk about throughout the year, really carry out at any time of any season. - For sure. I think seasonal decor, tasteful seasonal decor is fine. In fact, I think it creates like a warm inviting feel. So, get rid of the summer stuff per se, nice autumn reef, keep it tasteful. I wouldn't do it maybe a haunted house per se. Your 12 foot skeletons might be a overkill, but tasteful holiday core, I think is nice. - Yeah, having a fall doormat. - Yeah, maybe a very simple wreath on the front door. - Fall flowers in the planters. - Yeah, a pop of color with maybe some oranges and very moody for the season. - Yeah. - Make sure the home isn't cold. - Temperature is huge. I was in a house last week and, I mean, hot, mind you, but people wonder if the air conditioning is working, if the furnace is working or not, if you have a fireplace, get the pilot lights turned on, just make sure everything temperature is appropriate. That's a huge thing, I think. - Yeah, having the right. So when we set up our listings, we have Sono speakers that go throughout the house and play ambient music to set the mood, make sure there's no awkward silence in the home. - One thing that-- - And I would suggest that having appropriate kind of seasonal music too, right? Like in the fall time, you think about having a warm coffee or a hot chocolate huddled in the corner with the blanket. - Cozy kind of-- - Cozy kind of stuff. - One thing we do quite often for clients, but if you're thinking of maybe selling later in the fall, get your outdoor photos done sooner, especially if you have a nice backyard with a big pool. - We did a couple in the last week. - Yeah, catching that window where things are still green and vibrant can make a big difference selling it, especially if you're looking at selling it into October or November or even into the new year. - Yeah, for sure, if you have anything outdoors that can be marketed, - Yeah. - It's a good, especially with a pool. - Yeah. - If you've got a pool, it's probably being closed around Thanksgiving. That's usually the timeframe, maybe even a bit earlier, depending on how you set up your-- - Well, if you are planning on selling, schedule your closed pool closing later on in the year as well, as late as possible. - As late as possible. But it's even worth if it's a heated pool. - Keep it heated. - Keep it heated, keep it open, stretch it out. - Yeah, but one thing that I know those professional photos get those done sooner because we'll get a sign made up usually for the back door by the pool that showcases it. We can put it in the brochure. And as nice as your family photos are that you've taken throughout the years, they're not really ideal for-- - Yeah, how many times do you see a listing where the realtor is using photos that were clearly given to them by the seller? - Oh yeah, I have a photo of the backyard and it's them enjoying a family barbecue last summer. - Or just a resolution that looks like crap, right? Like it doesn't showcase the property whatsoever. - It's not the proper sizing for the listing. So now on that note, if you do have photos taken off season, so as an example, you're listing your property in November and there were some photos professionally taken in September, October, maybe you had the property listed in the spring or summer, took it off the market, now you're putting it back on for the fall season. Who knows, I wouldn't use off season photos in the actual listing. So to your point, having some in-home marketing is a pretty good strategy for showcasing what the home is or it could be, for sure. So you have to be cautious, I mean, 'cause you still wanna attract people to the property. And that is obviously a tool. If you have a beautiful pool, you do wanna showcase it, but at the same time, if your photos look old, then seasonality-wise, there can be a stigma with that. I saw it listing this week where there was snow in the photo and obviously those aren't new. So then you start wondering how long has this been listed for? - Exactly, at the same time, it's going to potentially make your listing feel outdated and people are questioning, why do they have summer photos? Oh, was it listed in the summer? And the, so be cautious of that, for sure. Anything else that you want to talk about for the fall selling season? - I think that covered a lot right there. - Yeah. - So next episode, we're gonna talk about the fall season and what to do to your home to properly maintain it, prepare it for the winter. So if you're not selling your home, what you should be doing to your property. - And it's a long list. - Mine is probably shorter than yours. You're very OCD when it comes to maintenance and upkeep. Your homes are always pristine, so I wouldn't say that necessarily, but the outside, I like to keep the outside tidy for sure. - All right, well, till next week, we'll see you then. - Thanks for watching. Hope you enjoyed the episode. 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