The howling…

Remember this kitchen?

It was featured here in mid-January when a rowhouse at 15 Rebecca in one of the demand, hipster-infested areas of Toronto went up for sale. The asking price was three-quarters of a million dollars for this piece of garbage sitting on 14 feet of questionable dirt.

Here’s what we said:

If the house sells, according to the Tweets and posts, it will ‘prove’ the local market has resiliency and duration, that a piffle like rising mortgage rates or a stress test cannot stop it. This place is an utter, complete, unqualified, horrific, likely diseased, dump. Makes you wonder if the people on either side of space a local real estate site called a “howling shithole”, know what’s but a few inches away.

And here is what the listing agent, Allister John Suinclair (Re/Max) had to say about a property prospective buyers should have been given hazmat suits to view

Builders Delight Perched In The Highly Desired Neighbourhood Of Trinity Bellwoods! Attention Renovators & Builders! 9 Foot Ceilings. This 2 Storey Home Just Needs Tlc, Renovations And Remodeling To Become Your Dream Home! Just Steps To Queen Street, Trinity Bellwoods Park, Ttc, Subway, Shops And So Much More. Prime Location! Don’t Miss This Opportunity! **** EXTRAS **** Property Being Sold As Is Where Is, Street Permit Parking Available, Roof Is In Good Condition. Upgraded Furnace – Recently Serviced With New Heat Exchanger And Motor. Hot WaterTank (Rental – 2016)

Here is what one poster to this pathetic blog said, wile others (from Vancouver, of course) said it looked like a decent place to them!

“The rowhouse is likely sold as you read this. buyer will put 100k (no permits needed…) into it and relist in 3-4 months at 999k. And they will get it. Easy money. This is priced correctly….”

Well, now we know what happened. The house sat on the market for two months, was relisted once and sold this week for …ta da… $675,000, or 10% below list. (It closes April 6th.) Obviously it’s a gut, nothing to save, big bucks to shore the walls so the neighbours don’t fall in, no parking, a complete rebuild and no matter the result you still can’t swing a decent-sized cat inside. So is that the right price?

Beats me, but it says this about the market: (a) there’s been a salient change over the past months as the DOM stat grows, (b) however greater fools are still out there and (c) scant listings in popular areas means POS such as this still find a buyer, even at 90% of asking.

Anyone who believes rising rates, the mortgage stress test, moronic politicians and economic uncertainty are not having an impact has their blinders on. Toronto sales tumbled 25% last month. Vancouver detached numbers are awful. Look at poor Victoria, where March sales have crashed 28.5%. Three-quarters of regional markets are stagnant or in decline. “The notion that the new stress test for uninsured mortgages would slow down Canada’s housing market is getting more and more currency,” RBC senior economist Robert Hogue wrote in a note to clients late last week. “After a sharp drop in January, home resale activity was weak again in February.”

It will take a full six months of B20 to know the impact. Meanwhile the US Fed will boost its rate for a fifth time next week, and our guys will follow later in the spring. The suicidal BC ‘spec tax’ will join the 20% go-home tax, the new luxury tax and the empty-house tax soon. And now the Bank for International Settlement is lumping our financial institutions in with those in China, as being the most at risk in the world. Guess why? Yup. House lust has led to extreme mortgage snofling.

Makes you wonder what bank handed over the money for this?