Ep 11: Guelph real estate weekly sales update Mar 30- Apr 5 2025

This week, Ryan discusses a variety of topics related to Guelph real estate including:

- news regarding tariffs and the direct impact on Guelph real estate

- Q1 2025 sales results are down vs 2024

- April 2025 sales off to a decent start

- 1 tip for buyers in this market

- 1 tips for sellers in this market

More at Beth and Ryan's Guelph real estate blog: 

You can always get touch with Beth and Ryan Waller on their website

Transcript

Welcome to the Guelph Real Estate Report podcast with your host and Guelph realtor, Ryan Waller. This podcast is designed to provide information for those buying and selling homes in the Guelph area to make the process more informative, fun, and a little less stressful. Now on with the show! Hey everyone, it's Ryan and thanks for tuning in to the Guelph Real Estate Report. This is episode number 11. What a week it has been. From news headlines to the Guelph real estate market to finalizing the Q1 numbers, we're going to take a look today at a number of topics. But let's start with the headlines. Let's start with the big one. The US has introduced tariffs. And I'm assuming that unless you live under a rock you knew that. And they are having an impact on the United States the rest of the world and of course Canada. But. Those tariff threats, announcements, implementations, all of those things related to Donald Trump and the United States actually impact golf real estate. There was a report that came out this week from the Conference Board of Canada that talked about the cities that would be most impacted by tariffs in Canada. And golf was number one on that list. Why? Because of our industry. We have a big agricultural industry, and we have a big automotive and metals industry. And there is concern that if these tariffs do hit at the maximum level, golf is going to be the hardest hit city in the country. And of course, that's not good for anyone living in Guelph. We already have an unemployment rate that is higher than the provincial and national averages. We are heavily reliant on those industries and other major employers. The University of Guelph, Sleeman brewery. All of these industries could get hit and push that unemployment rate even higher. And of course, if the unemployment rate goes up or if people are even thinking that perhaps there is risk to their job, the last thing they're going to do is go out and buy a house. So it has a ripple effect. It's crazy to think that decisions that are made by the president of the United States impact Guelph, Ontario real estate, but they really do. In fact, it's likely the main reason why sales in Guelph were so poor in February. Multi multi year low perhaps even the worst February in Guelph followed by a terrible start to March. Started to pick up towards the end, but still a month that was significantly lower than prior March months. And I don't mean to get all doom and gloom because it's not. And in every situation like this, there is opportunity. And opportunity in this case, is coming to buyers who have the chance to get into a house because they're not selling as quick as they once were. Houses are sitting on the market longer. In some segments, there is more room to negotiate, and buyers, for the first time in a long time, have had a better opportunity to get into a house. In fact, we're working with a number of first time buyers right now who have the luxury of looking at a number of homes and comparing them and negotiating them against each other, because there is more selection, and that's the type of market depending on the segment we're in, that is beneficial to a buyer right now. If you tally up the sales that happened in Q1, so that's January 1st to March 31st, 2025 versus the prior year's. The Guelph real estate market was down. I don't think anybody that I talked to about this would say, wow, I'm really surprised about that. It was pretty well documented at the first quarter of 2025, in what real estate was going to be on a decline, and it is down double digits. Um, at the time, we are looking at about -12% in the number of homes sold. And just a disclaimer on that. The Gulf Real Estate Board merged with Toronto at the end of last year, and there were still were a few glitches as we got into January, but it's not going to be far off. That -12 is about the number in Q1. January was okay. It was a really, really bad February as mentioned, and a somewhat bad march. But as we get into April, things are starting to turn around and it looks like very much like Covid at the beginning of Covid anyways. Very much like that. The news headlines rocked people and then the market started to come back to life. For the remainder of Q1, we saw increased inventory, especially in the condo segment, especially in the stacked townhome and townhouse segment, which I continue to talk about. It's going to be a problem in the future, there's no doubt about it. And if you listen to people who make podcasts in regards to Toronto real estate, you'll notice that they've been talking about this for the longest time, that the condo market has somewhat collapsed. I always tell people that we are a very small subsegment of the Toronto market, but we do follow it slightly. And if the Toronto condo market is really down, we're just slightly down, but we are down. It's not a segment that is rising right now. If you're in a condo and you're selling it, you probably need to negotiate or accept the current market prices. But a lot of times people tend to hang on to prices that were from the peak and think that they should be getting close to that, because I don't blame them for many years. Year after year after year, prices kept going up and up and up. It was almost a guarantee that if you list, you're probably going to get the same or better than the last sale. Well, it's not the case anymore. And in many cases, condos are selling for less and less. We're starting to see assignment sales. This is a situation where a person has agreed to buy. In most cases a condo, and they don't want to close on it. This could be for any number of reasons. They don't want the investment any longer. The investment has depreciated. They don't like the terms. For example the interest rates. They don't like the delays that the builder is putting on them. Any number of reasons. But assignments are starting to come. They're essentially assigning the sales contract to someone else, a new buyer, so that the existing buyer or the original buyer doesn't have to close. The new buyer will. And on the other hand, we're starting to see a really competitive segment under $900,000 in detached homes. And this is partially because interest rates decreased. The cost of borrowing for many first time buyers has gone down from last year, and they are in a position where they feel like, yeah, I want to get in the market and yes, I want a detached house. And yes, the pricing is starting to make sense to me. So that segment in particular, 900,000 and less in Guelph is still pretty hot. Okay, enough of that. On to the weekly sales. Um, we had 32 sales in the Guelph real estate market over the past week, uh, of which 17 were detached homes and 15 were condos. Nothing really remarkable here, um, in either segment. But what I can tell you is that the number of houses selling per day is ticking up. It's just under five now. And interestingly, there were no houses in the past week in the detached segment that sold over $1 million. It's one of the first weeks we've seen that happen in a little while, but everything sold between 500 and 900 and in the condo segment. Um, really? Not a lot to report there either. There was $1 million sale there. Um, but nothing unusual. As we get into the spring market, it appears that sales are starting to pick up. I know Beth and I are having an extremely busy April, um, with both buyers and sellers, and we are just a small segment. One of the forward indicators, as I call it, that we look at when we are trying to gauge the upcoming market, is to talk to our stager, and if our stager is very busy, and if our photographer is very busy, that means that there are a lot of listings coming. So they are both swamped. So there's a lot of choice coming. It is prime season. April, May and June are the majority of sales months for the year. And so we anticipate if you're buying you're going to have lots of options. Okay, I'm going to digress a little bit here, but I'm going to give you two tips. If you are buying or selling a house in Guelph this spring, because spring is the busiest time of the year for transactions, it's best to be prepared and through all of the business we do. Here are tips, one for buyers and one for sellers on how to get the best experience in your transaction. Let me start with the classic. Sell me this pen strategy, and the idea around this is that it gauges a sales person's ability to sell. Oftentimes, the salesperson will immediately start by telling the benefits of the pen. Why it may be a better pen than what you're used to. Maybe it's less expensive than what you're used to. Maybe it has a better warranty on and on and on. But where the salesperson actually goes wrong is that that's not the way to sell a pen, because you're not solving the problem of the potential buyer. The salesperson may believe that the extended warranty of the pen is the most important feature, but the potential buyer doesn't care about that. The potential buyer doesn't like blue ink. They only want a pen with red ink. But because the salesperson didn't ask and find out what it is that motivates the buyer, they failed the whole exercise. Buying and selling a house is very similar to that. Understanding the seller's motivations will help you get a better deal, and a better deal could be a lower price. It could be a quicker closing. It could be any combination of variables that is motivating for the buyer to buy the house, and motivating for the seller to sell it. So as an example, if the motivation of the seller is to get out of the house quickly because they purchase something else, if you as the buyer are flexible and can close quickly to help that seller, they may be willing to take a lower price to get the transaction done. It's important that your realtor understands on your behalf what the motivation of the seller is, and it's not always disclosed, but there are some clues and some tips and tricks that your realtor can use to help you try to identify them. The key here, like the pen exercise, is that you have to ask questions or listen, as opposed to simply pushing your own desires onto someone else. Let me give you an example for sellers. That goes back to some corporate jargon and examples that I have. And it's called a decision tree. And if you think about a decision tree as, let's say a Christmas tree where it's pointy at the top and it gets wider as it goes down at the top, the pointy part, that's the start of their decision making. And the bottom part, the widest part of the tree is where they've made a decision and are moving into a house. In a buyer's mind, there are logical steps to get from the top of the tree to the bottom. The top, of course, is looking at houses online, whether that means looking in a certain price range, looking in a certain neighborhood, looking in a certain style. People start their search online, and if you don't pass the first test online of looking at houses, you never make it to the second step of actually viewing the house as a seller. You always want to pass the first test. You always want to convert from online to in-person. Almost every home search that starts today starts online. And if your house doesn't show well when someone is looking in a certain price range versus other houses or in a specific neighborhood, if it doesn't show the best or in a specific format, if it's not the best looking condo, if it's not described appropriately. People will just click to the next house. As a seller, it is so important that your home looks the best that it can look when people are searching online. Because if they don't like your home just like a dating app, they'll swipe and they'll go on to the next one. This is where you lose people, and this is why we believe it's so important to at least have a staging consultation. We work with stagers that we bring into every one of our listings, to give the homeowner some advice on how to make their home look as good as it can for photos, whether that means a little bit of staging. Maybe the seller doesn't need any staging, maybe it's some decluttering. It's a minimal time commitment on your part as the seller, but it makes a massive difference. A home that doesn't show well just gets swiped and the buyer looks on to the next house. So if you're considering listing your house and you are working with a realtor who doesn't value that, you should call us even if it's just for a second opinion. Because in many cases, the value of staging is well worth it. If you have any questions on the golf real estate market, you can always find us on our website at BethandRyan.ca Or you can call us. Email us. We have a blog on the same article and a video to talk to you soon.