Team Updates

One of the biggest red flags I see when hiring an agent is agents that are very quick to reduce their commission. If they're quick to reduce the commission in front of you to make the deal what do you think that's going to happen when it comes time to negotiate the price on your house? Out there in the market right now there's 3% Realty, 2% Realty, 1% Realty or even do it free and post it online but it is really just a race to the bottom and what you really want to be looking at is what kind of value is the agent going to be bringing to make sure I net the most out of my sale. www.JudyLindsay.com 204.925.2900 

I got a call from a client who is gonna lose their house. It was a really unfortunate situation they had some health issues and because of that they failed to make their mortgage payments and they called me and we were able to help them out and I want to share the story because I feel a lot of people get stuck in situations they don't know where to turn. Simply, they called us we put an offer on their house we allowed them to stay there and rent it back from us and now here we are five years later and their financial situation has improved, and they've been able to buy the house back off us. And their family is still in their family house Everything is perfect, they love us they're very thankful that we could help them out and if you know anybody who's in this situation and doesn't know what to do best they can do is call us and hopefully we can help them too. www.JudyLindsay.com 204.925.2900

What is the best thing about owning a house in Winnipeg? But first what happened in the Winnipeg real estate market in May？ In May in Winnipeg we saw the average price of a single family detached house increase 10.2% however sales were down 4.9% in condos we saw sales down 42% and the average price increase 1% as expected the numbers continue to be very strong here in Winnipeg now the best part about having a house in Winnipeg the market is always consistent right now here a lot of stories coming out of Toronto and Vancouver people losing hundred thousand $200,000 underwater on properties they bought two three years ago and that's a big hit for a lot of people especially if you're going in with only five or 10% down even if you're putting any money down that's a lot of money to lose. Here Winnipeg over last 25 years we've seen the market continuously go slowly, but rise and so if you're looking to invest in real estate it's a great market to be in and if you're just owning a house here it's a great market to be in because you don't have to worry about those big swings up or down. www.JudyLindsay.com 204.925.2900

This week's video I want to take the time to say thank you to all of our past clients, current clients, friends for all the referrals. I've been in the business now for 25 years and had a client call me 2 weeks ago who I'd sold their house in 2000 and they're now time to sell so they thought nice enough of me to call us back. Even my mom still gets referrals from the 90s when she sold houses which says something about quality of service and we're just very appreciative of the referral business and repeat clients we have and it's really what drives me in the business it drives me for our brand, to support what my mom had built and it drives me going forward. Like real estate is a lot of work, it can be a lot of headaches but the appreciation from our clients and thank you for your referrals, it does mean a lot to me and my family. www.JudyLindsay.com 204.925.2900

Hey Dad, what's the best time of year to buy a house? That's a question that gets asked a lot. Yeah. It doesn't really matter. Meaning in the sense that it's kind of like planting a tree when's the best time to plant a tree, well 20 years ago, next best time is now. When it comes to buying, it's important a lot of times people get really caught up in like okay I'm pre approved, I'm ready to go and they get so excited they just want to jump right in and buy something right away and that's a lot of times where you see houses getting bid up a lot because people are so excited and they're like I finally found my dream house or it's exactly what I've been looking for and they will pay more for it. It's really important to be patient and that doesn't matter what time of year it is, it's having that that patience to find the right place, make sure you're paying the right price because it's easy in real estate to make money as prices go up but it's also easy to lose money if you make a bad buy, overpay, have construction problems or problems within the house it can really cost you a lot of money because especially as first time home buyers are usually I'm going to say 5% down or 10% down if you don't have a lot of equity in your house like you know say you're buying a $300,000 house and you save $15,000 over the last couple years, great wonderful, but now you get in there and now you find out that you have to replace your roof and that's going to cost $15,000 well you just spent the last two years saving that how are you supposed to come up with $15,000 right? So you can really get into a lot of trouble quickly if you're not making smart decisions and taking your time and looking. Absolutely. Has there ever been a house for you that you personally bought that lost money or wasn't a good deal? Yes. Yeah? Can you tell me about that? Yeah, a couple times most houses make money just be cause real estate is pretty easy you know your numbers going into it. Sometimes the market doesn't react the way you think it's going to. We usually are really good at planning for the worst case scenario so the one we lost money on was a condo that we bought for $150,000, we thought we could do a quick cosmetics on it and sell it for about $180,000, $190,000 and it ended up that we had to do more work to it than we thought so we ran in the over budget on the expenses and then when it came time to sell it we sold for $10,000 less than we thought we would so we pretty much broke even on it but we didn't didn't make anything so it was a lot of work. Another one we made money on it, it was another condo, we bought it for $160,000 we thought we could sell it for around $240,000 and we could have made good money on it because the renovation cost was about $25,000 which means we're in for about $185,000, $190,000 but then they had a special assessment come in on it for about $7,000 so that made the margin thinner and then we ended up carrying it longer than we anticipated and because we had it on a line of credit it was costing us about $1500 a month to carry it so the carrying cost kind of killed the profit that we were going to make on so same thing basically walked away with zero. Yeah. So good lessons but again the reason why we didn't lose a lot of money because we went in with our eyes open knowing that okay in a worst case scenario that this is how bad it could be right and we've had other ones where it's been best case scenarios where you know what we expect we had a house where we thought we could sell for $220,000 but the renovation took longer which is like which is not good but again went along with the worst case scenario of how long it takes so paying more for holding costs but the market went up such that when we looked at I was like wait we can actually get at one point I was like oh we can get $250,000 for this house now we can get $260,000 and then it ended up getting bid up to $280,000 Wow. You know so that's how you can get those upside surprises too which is pretty cool. That's so amazing. Yeah. Yeah and to only you've been in real estate for over 25 years and to only have two houses where you've broken even I would say it's pretty good success. Thanks! No that's really good, that's super cool actually. Well it is pretty easy because you know the numbers going in yeah the only surprises that you made get is holding it longer, renovations taking longer or costing more for renovations but if you do it enough your numbers get tighter on what can be your worst case scenarios and that's always been the thing. If you buy this house what's the worst case scenario and can I live with that worst case scenario and if you can't live with it you don't have to buy it, go buy another one. Yeah. I love that, that's super cool. www.JudyLindsay.com 204.925.2900

So like literally all of my friends have been asking how did you end up working with Barbara Corcoran? Well, it's a funny story because it goes back to probably a little more than 10 years ago. We had or I was part of a mastermind group so it was all the top agents in North America at times about 50 of us would get together every year and kind of share best business practices and we had hired her to come out and speak to us and then afterwards we got talking kind of negotiating in a sense to have her represent us and work with us and do commercials with us but at the time she wasn't known, she wasn't on Shark Tank at the time and so she wasn't known. So I asked my friends, I said what do you think of this you know and they were like I don't know who you're talking about so I actually turned her down and You turned down Barbara Corcoran? Yeah well, Crazy, but no one knew who she was so. Very smart lady, obviously knows real estate really good and just a great person and then once she got onto Shark Tank then people started to know her more obviously and then that's when we got connected again and it's been a really good relationship and it's interesting because you can see why people like her are in positions that they are like she is just genuinely nice and obviously in a sense I'm nothing in comparison to her but but she remembers, she knows you, she smiles it's like you know every time like I only see her every couple of years but we're in contact all the time but you know she's just a genuinely nice, nice person that you know somebody you want to hang out with every day. Absolutely, absolutely. And at the time she would have been working with people like Donald Trump ? A few years ago? When did she start doing business? Oh yeah, yeah I think she was very similar to my mom like as far as when she started. Similar age and she was very driven, much like my mom in real estate to do a lot of deals and uh but again not so much on the driven side but just again on a great personality side that's what made her successful and that's what made my mom successful too is is really having that connection with people, people knew that she really cared about you know how how they're going to be in the house. Yeah that's so important. www.JudyLindsay.com 204.925.2900

So we just finished our weekly Team meeting and we argued about something for almost an hour and I'm curious on your opinion of it. First I'll give you the market update for April and let you know what happened in the Winnipeg housing market and then I'll explain what we were arguing about. In April in Winnipeg we saw the average price of a house increase 6.6% over last year and sales were up 5.4% In condos we saw sales decrease 17% but prices were up 3% So as you can see the market in Winnipeg continues to be really strong. We're still seeing lots of bidding wars and prices are pushing higher. Now the argument we had this morning and it's not only within our Team but it's also in the industry right now is how houses are marketed. 20 years ago we used to take one single picture of a house and that was it and we'd get lots of calls because people would want to find out more information. Nowadays we'll take 50 plus pictures, do a full Matterport virtual tour, aerial shots, video walkthroughs and a big fancy brochure that shows all the features and upgrades that have been done the house. Now by doing all that what happens is buyers don't call us because they have all the information. It also takes away a bit from the seller's privacy because they're showing so much information. So the argument is, should you show everything to the marketplace so that the buyer can make a decision and then call us if they want to or should we have good quality magazine quality type pictures that piques the interest, kind of sell the sizzle not the steak, so that people want to call us and then us as salespeople can do our job on actually selling the house. So I'm curious on your opinion. Should we have basic marketing that encourages calls or should we have all the information out there so people can make their decision. Please let me know in the comments, I'd appreciate that. www.JudyLindsay.com 204.925.2900

Should I save up to buy a place or should I could I go out right now and just rent out an apartment or a house? Yeah that's a really good question especially for any young person who's in their parents basement looking to get out because it is a big financial decision. Housing will always be the major part of your budget whether you're renting or owning it's going to cost a lot of money so my suggestion is to stay in your mother's basement as long as possible and invest that money and have that grow for as long as you comfortably can. When it comes time to move out it really depends on your own personal situation if you can afford to buy and if owning a home is going to suit your own personal needs. Yeah. So what would be the benefits of buying over renting? Well if you own your own house the nice thing about that is you know your cost so it may be expensive because you have to come up with your down payment initially but in the long run you know that your mortgage payments $1200- more than likely it's going to stay at that and in fact when you do your mortgage term you're guaranteed for 5 years or 10 years whatever term you want to commit to that that's all you're going to pay where if you're renting you can pretty much be assured that if you start off at $1200- in year one that next year it's going to go up to $1250- or $1300- but it is definitely going to increase in time. Real estate's really easy in a lot of ways because you can just look back in history and see well what happened 10 years ago? What happened 20 years ago? Well 20 years ago a one bedroom cost $600- a month now you're looking at 12 or $1400- a month or more right and same thing with housing you know that 20 years ago you could buy a nice house in Crestview for $85,000 now that nice house is going to cost you $400,000 or more but the good news is if you had bought 20 years ago you'd still be making the mortgage payment on that you know and your payment may only be $600 a month Yeah. Right but if your lifestyle doesn't suit owning meaning that you're not sure where you're going to be in 2 3 years or how your life's going to change or you might be wanting to travel renting could be a great option for you because houses can be expensive if you get in the wrong house and you have a lot of expenses like say you have to start doing roofs or you have to do your hot water tank and furnace that can add up very quickly and if you're on a limited budget these things can really be tough on you. Absolutely. It feels a little bit discouraging to know that everything was so much cheaper 20 years ago and I should have bought my house when I was 2 years old but there is no time like right now. Right. Like you were saying earlier. right? That was the same thing when I was your age instead of buying a house for $80,000 in Crestview when I was 20 years before me it was you could've bought that same house for $40,000 and then likewise 20 years before that you could've bought for $20,000 so I'd say real estate is pretty easy cause you know where it's been in the past and more likely where it's going to go in the future and houses exactly what what I said is just like planting a tree, best time to plant a tree? Right now. Yeah. Second best time? Or actually the best time was 20 years ago. Oh yes, yes second best time, so right now. Yeah, yeah So when coming to buy a house don't make the mistake of waiting too long because prices will definitely go up in the future rent prices will go up in the future and as a young person starting out a good idea is to buy a house and then have a friend rent with you like share the cost but you're the one who's owning it and they're helping build your equity so every year that you're you know if your payment say $1200- a month you're putting you know over time more than half of that is going to go to paying down your mortgage which means directly building your wealth. Absolutely and if your friends helping you pay the rent you know it's going directly to your mortgage you don't have to worry about that Yeah. And that's really good that's very good advice dad, thank you. www.JudyLindsay.com 204.925.2900

Hey dad, how did you get started in real estate? Well, it's an interesting story and I think you'll appreciate this.I well I wanted to work in real estate right out of high school but my dad says no, you've got to go to university first and I said okay fine You said the same thing to me yeah yeah and So I went to university for one year and then ended up getting a corporate job where I was kind of moving up the ladder and I figured well I'll be better off staying in this corporate environment and moving up as opposed to continuing with university. Unfortunately I got kind of in that trap of being in that company then I wanted to get into real estate but I couldn't afford it that was the problem because at that time and still today you have to have a a good amount of money saved up to invest in yourself, in your business, in your clients to really be successful and so that was kind of where it was just kind of left and until one day my mom called me and just to go for lunch and we got talking and she said well if you want to get into real estate I'll help you out and I said well amazing and that was literally like probably like a little over 25 years ago now. What did she do to help you out. Two things and this is going back to I guess what we do now for agents coming in is provide them with business right away. So, a person just starting out typically you know how you see on day 1 you're going to start calling people you know and saying hey you know can I buy or sell your house you know anybody wants to buy or sell a house but if you're working in a team day one you can kinda get somebody to work with and be mentored by somebody so and that's what happened with working with my mom and is that you know kind of on day one like day one I remember picking up my lockbox key to go show houses and I had a client who was able to sell a house in my first week which also helps with kind of getting rolling and being successful having those early successes and not being stressed by not making any money yeah so that that was how I started real estate. I love that and now you're carrying on your mom's legacy Judy Lindsay Team. That's right yeah with my daughter here working with me. Yes, yes Maybe one day I'll carry it on for you. www.JudyLindsay.com 204.925.2900