Whether you are in the office or on-the-go, the new CMHC Mobile KIT provides quick and convenient access to tools and resources relevant to today’s busy mortgage professional. [...]]]> CMHC is pleased to introduce two new tools designed to provide you with flexible and convenient ways to access comprehensive CMHC information anytime, anywhere.

The CMHC Mobile Kit for Mortgage Professionals

Whether you are in the office or on-the-go, the new CMHC Mobile KIT provides quick and convenient access to tools and resources relevant to today’s busy mortgage professional. These tools and resources will help you stay informed and can easily be shared with your clients to help them make informed decisions.

Recognizing that you work in a fast paced, electronic and mobile work environment, the new CMHC Mobile KIT is a free application that can be easily downloaded to your mobile device and allows you to quickly access:

• Insurance product and premium information
• The latest news, including recent insurance announcements
• Calculators and tools (including The Mortgage Payment, Affordability and Premium Calculator)
• Your library of customized RESOURCE factsheets and CMHC housing guides to share
• Key CMHC contact information

The CMHC Mobile KIT is available 24/7 to mortgage professionals from across the country and can be downloaded to your Blackberry, Android or iPhone device at cmhc.ca/mobile.

The Premium Calculator

CMHC has launched its Premium Calculator, a new tool to support Canadian homebuyers. With this easy-to-use online calculator, potential homebuyers can quickly estimate mortgage insurance premiums allowing them to make better-informed home buying decisions. The Premium Calculator is the latest addition to CMHC’s suite of resources that support Canadian homebuyers.

The Premium Calculator helps estimate the CMHC Mortgage Loan Insurance premium payable when your clients are purchasing a home.  Simply enter the purchase price, down payment and the amortization period to calculate the applicable premium. The calculator is also available online through EveryThingYouNeed.ca and cmhc.ca.

For more than 65 years, CMHC has shared a wealth of knowledge, housing expertise, tools and guidance to help mortgage professionals stay informed and become trusted advisors to their clients.

Welcome to Shanghai, China, the financial capital of the country.  It is also a hub for commerce, culture, industry and tourism.  Shanghai is a major [...]]]>
The Chinese real estate experience in the past few years has been one of growth, increased growth and now, recently stabilized house prices.  Here we give a history of those years.

Welcome to Shanghai, China, the financial capital of the country.  It is also a hub for commerce, culture, industry and tourism.  Shanghai is a major player in the international market and has the largest shipping container port in the world.  A first time buyer looking for a home near Shanghai would not find one they could afford within an hour’s commute of the city. It is one of the most populated cities in the world, but here we can study in great detail the Chinese experience.

Previously, we spoke about China’s success in creating manufacturing capacity, and with it the creation of better jobs and increased wealth. The key to their success is that their currency, the Yuan (Renminbi) has been pegged artificially lower than its true market value, pegged to the U.S. Dollar.  This creates a situation where Chinese goods look more attractive to U.S. consumers than domestically produced ones. Chinese factories get more orders, and have an opportunity to grow at the expense of U.S. producers.  The market turmoil of 2008 was a symptom of the global economy slowly adapting to this great transfer of wealth from the United States to China.  The realization that the U.S. has lost its greatest source of revenue, that is the discretionary spending of the now waning middle class.

This growth has fueled the Chinese economy, which naturally has caused corresponding increases in the value of real estate. China has become awash in money from investments, as well as income from their trade surplus.

In early 2009, world markets were coming to terms with failed banks like Lehman Brothers and government bailouts of corporations.  General Motors, a former industrial powerhouse was one of many massive corporations that were of concern.  Fears of what could happen under a cascade of failing enterprises touched everyone.  Even China was not immune to the crisis.  They injected over 500 Billon U.S. dollars into their economy in the form of stimulus, and lowered their benchmark interest rate in order to protect their economy, just like everyone else around the world. You had a robust manufacturing, low interest rates, abundant cash flow, great growth potential, and favourable exchange rate, everything was going China’s way, of course there would be tremendous growth! Economic growth that made its way to real estate prices too.

In 2009, the average home price in the largest cities of China increased 3.9% some of those cities saw 1% increases in a single month.  By December of 2009 there was concern that owning property was becoming out of reach of ordinary Chinese people and there was a real fear that there could be a real estate bubble forming.  The government soon created a new restriction on the buyers of second homes.  Buyers would have to come up with a down payment of 30% for any home over 90 meters square and a 50% down payment for any home under 90 meters square.  The ability to apply for a loan for a third home was suspended.

Government Corporations wanted to get in on the money that was being made in Chinese real estate.  Companies totally unrelated to the industry began sprouting a real estate division and then developing residential complexes.  Shipbuilders, oil companies, chemical companies, defense contractors, telecom companies, with no experience, with their huge cash reserves began bidding against each other for vacant land that wasn’t even in a highly demanded area.  This poorly contrived system eventually resulted in the construction of homes that still are vacant, cities that are over built. In some cases the builder would build the residential and commercial buildings of a brand new city and also all the infrastructure like airports. These new cities had such a low population that businesses there would have no hope of developing a customer base to support the various enterprises. Thanks to these bidding wars, in 2010, the average home in China increased 10.3%

In January 2011 Shanghai, and Chongqing started charging a property tax to dissuade ownership in these heavily demanded cities.  They also raised the benchmark interest rate three times. However, the one policy that I believe is the true cause of China finally being able to reduce the high growth has to do with their banks ability to lend money.  They increased the amount of money the banks have to keep on hand out of total deposits.  This policy reduces cash flow in the economy because it reduces the amount of loans the bank can issue.  This one policy more than any other, in my opinion has finally slowed Chinese growth, but it does so at the expense of private enterprise. Banks must now keep 21.5% of all the money they receive from depositors on hand and cannot be used as a loan.

This begs the question: is the result worth the price? It may be that this policy hurts the Chinese economy.  Many businesses require loans, loans that they could only get at private lenders with high interest rates (10% per month!)  Once the owners realized they could not keep up the loan payments, they decided to close their business to escape these loan sharks.

The future for real estate in China: You will see very little to no growth while the restrictive bank policy exists, but the government can remove this at anytime, and we will have the booming, growing China back.  The one thing that China has in its future is a growing middle class that will lead to a corresponding growth in the economy and also real estate.  The government cannot legislate its way out of that.  If they want to slow their growth I would float their currency a bit higher, not too much, and find a balancing act with a lower bank deposit rate.  Slower cash flow will only impede regular Chinese people with their private enterprises that help the economy be more efficient.  They need to let private enterprise prosper if they want to grow their middle class.  Tight money does favour the government corporations, but that is not where the future of China is.  It, like in all nations of the world rests in the hands of the middle class.

First, I want to tell you that yes, the rumours are true, you do not need a realtor to sell your house in Ontario, or even Canada. You can sell it yourself – privately. This is known as private sale or for sale by [...]]]>
You have many options available when selling your home in Toronto, Canada. 

First, I want to tell you that yes, the rumours are true, you do not need a realtor to sell your house in Ontario, or even Canada. You can sell it yourself – privately. This is known as private sale or for sale by owner (FSBO).  There are a number of places available to you for support if you want to do that.  With a private sale, you should be prepared to conduct the open houses yourself, put the ads in the paper yourself, take the photographs, post your house details on the internet, do all the negociating yourself.  Its a very hands-on process. 

If you are going to use the private sale route, I suggest that in real life you be employed either as a sales person or a business person as the skills you use in these positions make selling your home much easier.  When you are a salesman you are able to pick up on unspoken cues that potential buyers will be making.  When they come to your open house you will also be able to better decipher any statements they make to you about the property.  You will also be better able to speak to them and sell them on your house.  Skills aquired as a business person are good too as one of the most important decision making ability you will need to use is the ability to decided where to put your advertising expense.  You have to think about the money you are investing in a particular advertisement, gage who will see it, and if you will see a return on that investment.  If you are not a sales person, (or can’t force yourself to be one for a few months) you wont be able to close the deal and make the sale,  If you are not a business person, you will spend money aimlessly going down alley ways that don’t lead any where.  My reccomendation is that if you are not one of these people, please don’t try to sell your house yourself. It’s not going to work out.

Once you have decided to sell yourself, harden yourself to this decision.  You cannot sell with a half effort, you must give it everything you have, your full attention.  It will likely take longer than you imagine and you will need great amounts of patience.  Patience will also come in handy when negociating as the buyer of your property knows that you are saving the real estate commission when you are selling privately and will want to split that savings with you. They will ask for a cost savings if they are to buy your property. I spoke earlier about some of the activities that you will be required to perform, but there is some good news here for you. You can contract out those activities that you do not do well.  There are companies that can make a yard sign for you,  a website if you are not sure, internet marketing can be done by others, so can the photography or videography.  So if you know you don’t do something well, hire someone else to do it. You can hire a for sale by owner company that have a lot of these tasks integrated into a package for you, but don’t be fooled into thinking that once you sign up with these companies that the work is done, in fact it has just began.  The price they ask for what they give in return is quite high, but If there is any reason to use them it would be to save you energy so you can focus on closing the sale.

The descision to sell your home shouldn’t be made lightly, and neither should the decision to sell privately.  Make the decision once you have weighed the pros and cons and knowledge you can succeed.  You should also seek assistance and regular contact from your lawyer.  This is important if you don’t know the steps that go into the sale of a home.  The trickiest part is knowing what step comes after which.  I don’t want to weigh this down with too many warnings. If you want some advice, remember I can come see your house and give you my assessment of your situation.  At one extreme, we have the people who want to sell their condo at Bay and Wellesley for sure, if you are in this situation, you don’t need a realtor, or much help from anyone.  Just print a little sign ‘ Condo for Sale’ and put it up on the notice board in your building and it will be sold in no time.  Well, just make sure its a reasonable price and that you are not too crazy a person.  For the rest of us some good tips include : knowing what your competition is selling, and how, knowing your limitations, and being open to ask for help when neccessary.   The most important is to think about what you are selling and develop a plan that will get the type of buyers you want and stick to the plan.

Some expenses you will incur are media promotion (print newspaper, flyers for the neighbourhood, etc) $1200 for 3 months. Your lawn sign should be another $100, the feature sheets that you will give to potential buyers and the all important website will be another $150. So for three months you will have spent $1450. So thats why I say, if your going to do it, go all out! It doesnt make sense to spend that kind of money and get no results.  Think like NASA astronauts : Failure is not an option!

Now, my part of the story, I am Marcus Assalone, a Real Estate Salesperson for Coldwell Banker Terrequity here in Toronto.  I run this investment newsletter ‘Real Value’ that this article was first published on at news.marcus-assalone.com . Coldwell Banker Terrequity is a full service real estate brokerage which means that we sell properties and make our commission based on a percentage of the sale price.  Different brokerages offer different services and also charge different commission percentages.  Obviously, the less they do, the less the percentage.

Being full service basically means we do whatever it takes to sell your property. I sell every home like it was my own, but I do give my client a choice in one thing, and that is weither or not to list their property on the MLS.  Everything else is the same, I still advertise in the the same places, I still tell my buying clients about your property, the only difference is that in one case, if I list it exclusively, without it being on the MLS I am able to save you the commission that would have gone to the other Realtor.  So, you can choose to list your home either exclusively at a total commission of 3% or with the MLS listing which will be a total commission of 5%. If your property is in a competitive market, we may have to raise the total commission to 6% in order to give the buying Realtor and added incentive to bring their client to see your property.

If you decide to list your property with me, all these fees are totally contingient on me selling your house! If i don’t sell it, you don’t owe me anything.  All I am concerned about is – success! My success will be your success.

As you are deciding what is the best course of action for you and your home think about ‘what is it that sells a house?’  Is it the location of the house? The amenities that location offers? The condition of the home? of the neighbourhood?  Is it the kitchen that sell homes? is it the bathroom? how useful are these rooms to the house? or is it knowing what price to sell the property for? knowing if it is staged well? does it have curb appeal? is it the high end finishes that sell the house? or is it the advice of someone who knows what buyers are looking for and can counsel you correctly on that sale – who can tell you the right things to do – the right moves to make? In different neighbourhoods the buyers are looking for different things.

As your realtor I will be legally obligated to look out for your best interests.   I will do everything in my power to sell your home for the most money possible.  When we meet and together we develop a plan for the sale of your home, I will tell you my ideas. You will have no doubt that I bring the best value to help you sell your home.

So lets start on the right foot, schedule an appointment and have me come see your house and we will start the planning. Once you have all the information you need you can decide as you please, I will not put any pressure to force you into any contracts. My job is to help you.  My email is marcus-assalone@coldwellbanker.ca my direct line is (416) 495-2362.  If you call, chances are I will be on the phone and you will get my voicemail, leave me a message with how and when to best contact you.