Garth Turner

Nova Scotia, Toronto

Blogger at The Greater Fool

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The Troubled Future of Real Estate

1 day ago | greaterfool.ca | Garth Turner

Anne and her squeeze had a deer fence built at their summer place this past winter. The job was fine. Paying for it turned controversial. “I received a price for completion by text,” she tells me. “I asked for a proper invoice, and was refused…. Along with the explanation ‘If you get my drift’”. Yes, the fencing guy wanted to be paid in cash. With no record the work had ever been done. “I was shocked and wanted to correct the situation… My husband said, “Don’t rock the boat, just pay the bill”.
Flying blind through NOTL's murky housing market

2 days ago | niagaranow.com | Garth Turner

The folks down the street were pumped when a buyer finally came along. “Seven months,” she said. “Never thought it would take so long, since we priced to sell. But thank God we got out now.”Old Town. Waterview. Renovated. They thought selling last autumn would be a no-brainer. So they went ahead and bought firm down on Lake Erie. Then Trump showed up. And the stress began. Real estate’s a mess right now. Sales are down everywhere. The GTA has a whack of condos nobody wants. Inventory is up.
The Troubled Future of Real Estate

2 days ago | greaterfool.ca | Garth Turner

As this post is being written (Tuesday morning) the wait time to cross from Canada to the US on the Peace Bridge at Buffalo/Niagara Falls is… 0 minutes. As in, ‘zero’, according to the US Customs and Border Protection Agency. Car traffic between Windsor and Detroit has fallen by 83,000, compared to last year. Stats Can says the number of Canadians crossing back home in March fell 32%.
Capitulation Day

3 days ago | greaterfool.ca | Garth Turner

Now, aren’t you glad you didn’t panic, sell and bury your cash in the backyard after Liberation Day? Sure. Because here we be. On Capitulation Day. Tariff Man has flipped another flop, and Mr. Market can now see the beginning of the end of a failed 19th Century economic policy that made sense when robber barons had side whiskers, side wenches and side arms. As investors awoke today they learned the US had blinked and China winked.
The Troubled Future of Real Estate

4 days ago | greaterfool.ca | Garth Turner

Will a new cabinet make houses cheaper? We’ll see. The shiny new PM unveils his team this week. Choices for finance minister and the housing czar will be interesting. The Carney plan to rescue real estate is based on lower building costs and whipping up a mess of pre-fab affordable stuff. But as with the last plan (and the one the Cons proposed) it’s all dependant on whether or not the buyers show up. Lately they’re turtling. Looks like that will continue.
The Troubled Future of Real Estate

6 days ago | greaterfool.ca | Garth Turner

An historic mid-town rowhouse, 17 feet wide, sweetly reno’d, two-car parking and a one-minute walk to the Toronto subway emerged at $1.9 million. Hoping for a bidding war the agent set an ‘offer date’ of this past Tuesday. It came and went. No sale. Now it’s listed again, for $2.1 million. A more veteran agent says while the market overall is in choke mode, there are still deals flying around in the more affordable range of $1.7 to $1.9 million.
Selling herself - Greater Fool - Authored by Garth Turner - The Troubled Future of Real Estate

1 week ago | greaterfool.ca | Garth Turner

Jen wrote me this week. Her letter signed off with this: “From a single mom who never ever imagined selling herself on the internet just to make it in this world.”Now 32, she’s been through a ‘toxic’ divorce. The house was sold. They fought in court. “In the end, the judge awarded me everything he could because he knew this was my ex’s doing. Although I was awarded everything, I owed my lawyer so much money I ended up walking away with nothing.
Tensions rise as the rebs rally troops

1 week ago | niagaranow.com | Garth Turner

As he looks out over an expected sea of faces, the guy at the front plans to hoist a number. It will read, “530.”That, says Stuart McCormack, is the number of sleeps between next Wednesday night and the coming election in NOTL. “I know it sounds like a long time, but it isn’t. The last thing we want is people running around on the day of nomination saying, ‘Jeez, we need someone to run. So we’re starting now.’ ”This is the official birth of the first integrated local residents’ association.
The safe haven? - Greater Fool - Authored by Garth Turner - The Troubled Future of Real Estate

1 week ago | greaterfool.ca | Garth Turner

Sam says she’s had it. “Trump crashed my portfolio. He’s stressing me totally. I’m retiring in three years. I’m out of here.”So three weeks ago Samantha got rad. She went downtown and bought two kilos of gold. “Can’t tell you how nervous I was driving home,” she says. “I took some towels to wrap the bars in and hid them under the back seat. But when I got there, I couldn’t stop touching them.”Seriously. She’s smitten. And reckless. Gold has advanced in price by close to 30% this year.
Waiting out the storm

1 week ago | greaterfool.ca | Garth Turner

How bad does it get? This week the big real estate cartels report dismal spring sales – as the gloom spreads. GM is slashing a third of its workforce at the company’s biggest Canadian assembly plant. Trump just announced a 100% tariff on movies made outside the US – horrible news for Toronto, Halifax and the Lower Mainland. On NBC yesterday he repeated that Canada should be a state and the USA has no need for our “energy, lumber or cars”.