Best Wishes in the New Year!

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a safe and happy Holiday Season, as well as all the best in the New Year. The past year has been not only an exciting one, but a busy one in the world of real estate. I have seen new sales records being set throughout the city, and various projects come closer to completion. The King West area in particular has done especially well. FREED buildings have led this charge as their resale as well as pre-construction projects have had buyers lining up at the door - a testament to the quality and passion FREED DEVELOPMENTS put into their buildings. If I can provide any advice in the New Year, it would be this. Real Estate is more than bricks and mortar. It's about a lifestyle. It's about choosing not only where you want to be, but how you want to LIVE. Condo layouts can be changed. Houses can be torn down and rebuilt. But, your neighborhood will have a large part to play in how you LIVE - the restaurants, the nightlife, the schools, the parks, and anything else important to your lifestyle. If you keep that in mind, everything else will fall into place.

Best wishes,

Zoltan Kugler

Adventures in Real Estate

There are two things that Torontonians like to talk about most: weather and real estate. The weather has been up and down as of late and real estate has just been...well, actually it hasn't been so bad. Believe it or not, the sky hasn't fallen. Chicken Little can rest easy for now. Like little mushrooms of commerce, FOR SALE and OPEN HOUSE signs are popping up everywhere. Stand at the corner of King and Bathurst on a Saturday afternoon and you will know what I mean.

Maybe the doomsayers have been wrong. Or maybe its as simple as buyers taking advantage of attractive housing prices. Either way, the road ahead seems to be smoother than we had previously thought.

According to the Toronto Real Estate Board, the housing market has significantly improved over the last couple of months. The seasonally-adjusted annual rate of sales increased to 65,600 this past March. This figure is up 36% from a decade long low reached in January.

That being said, this is definately a buyer's market. There are no lineups of agents outside houses, armed with client offers.

No one that I know has a crystal ball. We've heard it time and time again: You just can't predict precisely what will happen in Toronto's real estate market. But, maybe the roller coaster ride we thought it would be, might have a couple more highs than previously imagined.