What's Going On

A house in Kingston sold today for $550,000 over the asking price of $800,000. It’s the biggest difference we’ve seen between list price and sale price. 

Here’s another sad fact: An offer of $100,000 over the asking price is as common on the streets of Kingston these days as a discarded mask. And more often than not, it will come up short.

It’s a discouraging state of affairs, unless you’re on the selling end of things. And even then, if you’ve got to buy something else immediately afterwards you might discover you’re not the lucky so-and-so you thought you were.

It’s not sustainable, of course. The centre cannot hold. But we don’t see the end of this madness coming this year. Prices will likely rise by another 10% or so.

I thought when I started this new bit that I might discover I actually had a point. But no, not really. This is just a 200-word gasp. A florid shake of the head. Because mostly we’re speechless. We’ve not seen anything like this before and we’ll be thrilled when we return to balanced market conditions, with a similar number of buyers and sellers. 

In the meantime, be good to yourselves, okay? And whatever else you do, be careful out there.