Buyers Wary of Bidding Wars
A friend of mine has a great one bedroom, one bath condo in downtown Toronto that he’s trying to sell. The plan, according to his real estate agent’s suggestion, was to put it on the market at a lower price than the rest of the competition and accept offers a couple of days later. So they went ahead with this strategy confident that it would be sold in days.
Surprisingly, that didn’t happen. There has been a lot of interest in the unit, but when it came down to it, the fear of a bidding war seems to have kept buyers from making offers.
There’s some hope for homebuyers that the new mortgage qualification rules announced last week will reduce the amount of bidding wars on properties by weeding out potential buyers who are recklessly bidding with little regard for how much their mortgage payments are going to be when interest rates increase.
With any luck, this will also help my friend sell his condo. It’s in a great location and the maintenance fees are still quite low, which is not something you can say for of a lot of condos out on the market.