Home that sold in December back on the market for $100K more
‘For some people this is not a housing crisis, it’s an investment system’
CAMBRIDGE — At the corner of Concession Road and Bishop Street North in Cambridge sits a 1.5-storey home with white siding and a small attached garage.
It’s quaint, with two upstairs bedrooms and two bathrooms. The kitchen is functional, but in need of an update, and most of the walls on the main floor have been painted white. The basement is finished, but the wood panelling also screams for a renovation.
It’s close to schools and shopping centres, and just a quick drive to local highways.
Last year a “for sale” sign was hammered into the front lawn and in December it sold for $427,000 to an individual named Abdolhamid Amirrad, according to land registry records. Then, earlier this month, another “for sale” sign appeared in front of the
home.
The asking price? A hair under $530,000, or about $100,000 more than it had just sold for — a price increase that is in line with how the market has gone in Cambridge over these past few months as the average price of a detached home jumped by about $94,000 between December and February.
It’s just one example from an overheated market that’s showing no sign of slowing down.
Calls and emails to the Burlington-based realtor handling the most recent sale, Hamid Amirrad, were not returned. It’s unclear if the realtor and the property owner are related or if they are the same person.
Brian Doucet, an associate professor in the school of planning at the University of Waterloo, said he’s noticed houses in his K-W neighbourhood go back on the market for higher prices shortly after they’ve sold, and he said it’s contributing to overall higher prices in the region and making it tough for local buyers and families to compete.
“What you end up getting is investors and speculators competing with households for a rather limited supply of housing ... and generally the investors have deeper pockets than the households,” Doucet said.
The online posting for the Concession Road home disappeared from the Realtor.ca website this week after The Record began inquiring about the property, and it’s unclear if the property has been sold.
To call Waterloo Region’s housing market hot would be an understatement as buyers scramble to find homes that fit within their budgets. Earlier this month, a semi-detached on Watercress Court in Kitchener sold for $801,000 — about $300,000 more than the asking price — and garnered 53 offers.
The price of a detached home in Cambridge has jumped by almost $100,000 to about $774,000 since December, according to statistics released earlier this month by the Cambridge Association of Realtors.
In Kitchener-Waterloo, the average price for a detached home is now more than $800,000. Realtors say a shortage of homes and an influx of buyers from outside this region, including the Greater Toronto Area, are pushing prices higher.
While it’s been tough for local buyers to break into the market, the steep increase in prices has been good for investors and speculators, Doucet said.
“For some people this is not a housing crisis, it’s an investment system that is doing very well.”
John Teixeira, president of the Cambridge Association of Realtors, said the price increase on the Concession Road house is in line with the overall market increase in Cambridge.
“Someone may have bought this has as an investment and to keep it for 10 years, but then looked at the market and said ‘wow I can get $100,000 more than I paid for it? Maybe I’ll do something else with my money.’”
As someone who has lived in Cambridge for 45 years, Teixeira said it’s hard to fathom just how much prices have increased. He sympathizes with first-time home buyers and said a mere five per cent down payment on the Concession Road home increased by $5,000 in a matter of weeks due to the price jump.
That extra money can be hard to find for first-time buyers in such a short amount of time, Teixeira said.
Doucet said governments at all levels need to introduce disincentives to cut down on house flipping and other activities that drive prices up at such an unsustainable rate.
He’d like to see a “speculator tax” that would increase taxes on properties where the owner doesn’t live, or properties that are empty, or are permanently rented out as Airbnb locations.
And he’s careful to discern between those who buy homes and view them as long-term investments for retirement or maybe even ten years down the road, and those who buy up properties solely for the purpose of reselling them shortly after for a profit.
“If we’re thinking of houses as homes, taxes like those slow down the competitors that view housing as a source of speculation and investment,” he said.