…“Kingston and Area home sales reach five-year high for February” is the heading you’ll find on the Kingston Area Real Estate Association’s website for the previous month.

Now, we guess we wouldn’t be surprising anyone at this point if we told you that 2017 is shaping up to be a very different year in Real Estate than the past few years.

For all of our buyers out there, we feel your pain. The stats are telling us we’ve got less inventory right now than we’ve had in almost a decade. Less inventory, along with what looks like the first signs of Toronto’s hot market directly affecting the Kingston market, is resulting in a year over year increase in prices, as well as a noticeable increase in the number of multiple offer situations. That is why it is important for Buyers to be pre-approved financially, and know what they can afford to pay and still sleep well at night in their new home. Don’t worry, double digit year over year percentage increases are not coming to this area any time soon.

For sellers, 2017 is looking good. There are fewer homes on the market so far, but just as many buyers as years passed. This bodes well for those of you planting for sale signs on lawns. Although Kingston still hasn’t approached the red hot lunacy of Toronto (the Kingston buyer will still ignore an overpriced listing), we have moved from a Buyer’s Market to a Balanced Market in the past couple of months. It’s still incredibly important to get your pricing right and have your home looking great, but the upside to it all is that you’re likely going to be looking at a higher sale price this year than you may have earned in years passed.

For some specifics on these trends click the link provided below or give one of us a ring to discuss what this could mean for you.

http://www.creastats.crea.ca/king/

One of our long-term team goals is to become a 100% by referral only real estate team. We love working with family, friends, friends of friends, and their friends’ family members that are friends with their neighbour’s uncle who met John that one time at that crazy backyard bbq where the family dog ate all the burgers.

No, but seriously, we’re all here for the long haul and we really love helping those closest to us, and hopefully by extension, those that mean the most to them too.

We know that to achieve our goal we’ve got to be great at what we do. With that in mind, one of the first initiatives we took on when we put our team together was the creation of what we believe is the most robust, most rigorous, listing package being offered by any Kingston based Realtor® or Real Estate Team.

Our aptly named Eight Week Marketing Plan is the final product. To our knowledge no other team in Kingston has laid out in such detail how your home is going to be advertised and marketed day after day, week after week. It’s all in writing too so there are no surprises and no disappointments. If you’re thinking of selling or know someone who is, don’t be afraid to get in touch to learn more about how our plan works for our sellers.