Advice for sellers: lock in big down payment
August 22, 2017
Home sellers in Toronto and Vancouver should take some defensive steps to protect themselves in a suddenly slowing market, cautions real estate consultant Ozzie Jurock.
“When there is a downturn, home buyers will always try to get out,” Jurock said.
He notes that housing sales are down this summer in both Greater Toronto and Metro Vancouver, and some buyers are getting cold feet. “In Toronto particularly, buyers bought at record prices in the spring. Now they have to close and cannot or won’t.” In some cases, buyers are unable to secure financing because the home they are buying now appraises at less than when they signed the deal, he added.
Greater Toronto Area benchmark detached house prices peaked in April and have fallen 8 per cent since then. Home resales in the GTA have tumbled too, dropping 40 per cent in July compared with the same month last year.
Toronto real estate lawyer Jason Gottlieb told CTV that he’s dealt with five cases in the last three months where home buyers tried to renegotiate the price and terms of a purchase.
“I think that the buyers are finding it difficult to come up with the money that they went into the deal and priced the properties at,” he said.
Toronto’s average cost of a home (across all property types) dropped from $920,791 in April to $746,218 in July – a $174,573 plunge.
Vancouver-based Jurock, who publishes a popular real estate newsletter,
said there are steps that home sellers should take in a slowing market. These include securing a large, non-refundable deposit, making the possession date as soon as possible, and having a lawyer prepare a clean and precise sales contract.