Toronto Condos

Promote Yourself by using Social Networking

If you are not on Facebook, you basically don't even exist, someone has told me some time ago. I am now driven to believe those people. To discover out what is going on in the lives of people you know you only have to browse these social network sites. Keeping in touch is just about intolerable without them.

However, staying informed about the life of your friends and acquaintances surely is not the only purpose of such websites. Publicizing yourself and promoting your product is another point of these sites as many real estate agents have found out. The times when a billboard or a little advertisement in a newspaper was enough for propagation of one's work or business are long defunct and they will never come back. Internet is THE tough device now. If you browse the internet, you will see lots of articles with tips on how to use, and promote yourself, on social networking sites.

Of course it's much more time consuming for older generations to get used to all the hundreds of new websites, types of writing, commenting and all the related tasks. Our children seem to know it somehow spontaneously, but for us, it might take a while to suss out how everything works. We stick with it and try our hardest to study it all. I surmise lots of of my fellow realtors have the same reactions.

Using the internet, writing on social websites and finding interesting and new things to post on our blogs is usually the last thing we want to do after a hard day at work. Nevertheless, saying that it's does form a slice of our daily routine. Instead of sitting down in front of the TV, leisure now means sitting in front of a computer and going on social networking websites. But does the population really think about what we write? Do individuals, other than fellow realtors, actually read the articles we put up? I guess we will never know for definite, will we?

I actually do examine the websites of my fellow real estate associates and I do read the articles they write, because the topics are of interest. For someone who is not connected to the housing market, I really couldn't say whether these reports would be of any interest. So now I don't have to see or talk to my colleagues often to know what is going on with their lives, I can read about it in their articles and posts. So I may not have spoken to someone for a long time, but I can genuinely say I have learnt alot about them, and this is all down to social networking. What a brilliant idea social networking is.

In my professional life I market Condos in Toronto, and I believe social networking to be one of the key ways of making professional contacts. I hope this small article was of any help for you!

Recovering Housing Market

As the new Global Real Estate Trends report by Scotia Economics claims, the world economic market is on the right track to fully recover. Canadian real estate market is doing very well and in couple of other states, clear signs of the market recovery are showing too. 

The approximate number of MLS home sales was 465,000 last year, which means a seven percent increase from 2008. However, there was a decline in the number of new homes in 2009 compared to the year before. In 2009, the number of new homes was about 146,000 and in 2008 it was 211,000. Home prices rose to $315,000 in 2009. 

Canada is actually leading in the property price rises. In the third quarter of 2009, average home prices rose by 11 percent. "Canada still leads the pack among the markets we track." Adrienne Warren, Senior Economist of Scotia Economics claims. "Inflation-adjusted average home prices in the July to September period were up 11 percent from the same quarter a year ago, a dramatic turnaround from the 10 percent yearly decline recorded in the opening months of 2009. " Warren further says. However, there's no need to be worried about the increasing prices in Canada, according to Scotia Economics. The reason is that prices here increased most of all due to fundamental demand-supply factors and they should be stabilized soon. 

The average home prices in Australia went back to positive territory after a 5 percent increase between third quarters of 2008 and 2009. However, in the US, average home prices decreased by 6 percent in the third quarter of 2009 from the same period in 2008. Still, a very nice result, if we are taking into consideration that in the first quarter of 2009 there was fourteen percent decline in comparison with 2008. In European countries it's diverse: the situation in the UK is almost like the situation in the US, and in France we can see stabilizing of prices. "A shortage of homes for sale, alongside strengthening housing demand, is contributing to the firming in prices in a number of countries, including Canada, Australia and the U. K. " said Warren. 

Pleasant results. Quite expected, too, as we have been hearing about successful recovery quite a lot lately. Great to hear once again that Canada belongs to countries doing just fine. If we compare our results with those of the US, we are pretty good. Frankly, I may say I am quite proud.

Investing in Their Property Crucial for Canadians

With the start of new year, more Canadians are primarily focusing on paying down their debts, a poll conducted for Manulife Financial in December 2009 claims. After three quarters of rises of interest in investments, this was a quite surprising outcome. 

Actually, the priority to pay down loans has reached its highest level in 5 years on December 28 percent of polled Canadians consider taking care of their consumer credit their top priority. The result was 24 percent last year and 20 percent two years ago. Paying down one's own mortgage is the second top priority. 14 percent of respondents share this opinion, in comparison with 11 percent from a year ago. The thrid most common answer of Canadians was that they are saving for retirement, That was the answer of 11 percent of respondents, in comparison with 14 percent last year. 

As regards to the financial situation as such, 46 percent of polled Canadians believe it is better now than it was in 2004. Last year, the number of Canadians who share this view was 5 percent higher and it was 14 percent higher two years ago. 28 percent of polled Canadians believe that their financial situation 5 years back was just the same as it is today, and 25 percent of Canadians consider their current situation to be worse than it was in late 2004. 

As for Manulife Sentiment Index, after three quarterly gains in a row, it has decreased in December from 3 months earlier by 7 points to +18. The thoughts of Canadians about investment in different categories are what the index is focusing on. 

It's based on these categories primarily: 

-The most important for Canadians is investing in their homes. However, the index for investing in property declined by 5 points to +52 in December 2009. 
-Investment in real estate declined by 13 points in December after number of increases last year. Its level, +27 is still higher than it was last year, when it actually went to the negative territory. 
-Balanced funds increased by 2 points to + 16 in December 2009. 
-Cash and fixed income investments decreased by 8 points to + 10 in December. 
-The current level of equities is -5, as they have decreased by 6 points. 

Good to see that my fellow Canadian still consider investing in their homes this crucial. And it is also great to know that our country has responsible citizens, the top priority of whom is paying their debt. I would like to know if it was also infuenced by the warnings of the Bank of Canada's representatives.