Happy New Year, everybody, and welcome to our first blog of 2022. Like always, we upload these blogs to talk about all things real estate-related. So any questions you guys have both the market about investing, or even about life as a real estate agent, please contact us, I'll make sure to make a blog about it in the future.

So the first week of every month is always going to be go through the last month's previous stats, go through the market update, see what's been going on and help predict what we're seeing in the future. Unfortunately, due to the holidays, we haven't received those stats yet. So we're gonna have to see that blog for next week. But this week has already been a little bit crazy here in Ottawa. So I'm going to go through what we're seeing already in 2022.

So today, instead of looking at the actual market stats, I'm going to go through what I've been seeing personally in the market, both with properties that I'm offering on and with listings that we have live on the market. So this week, we've offered on a few properties, all of which have sold with over 10 multiple offers, and a new record-breaking prices. But this shouldn't be surprised because if you remember from December, we are seeing low low levels of inventory and a higher amount of sales. And there really isn't anything on the market right now causing buyers to fight over each other. And obviously, sellers to get the most amount of money.

So what does this mean for you in the market, the first thing that it means is you're going to want to make sure that you get your financing in order. So not only a pre-approval, but you want to be talking to mortgage brokers and see if you're at risk of making an offer without a mortgage condition. Because when we're in multiple offer scenarios, a lot of the offers that you're competing against will not have these conditions, making it very difficult to win a house, if you have the conditions.

Another major condition to look at is a home inspection. Now I'm not suggesting that you make offers without doing a home inspection. But for example, on a listing that I have this week, we've had three pre-offer inspections on it, we're holding offers today, which means that people are going ahead and doing an inspection on the property without an accepted offer so that they are able to make a firm offer on the property without conditions to possibly win in a bidding war. So once you have your pre-approval, and you have your inspection order, then you want to be deciding, okay, what do we think that this home is going to go for. And this can be very difficult in a hot market like this because if you're basing the comps on what has sold recently, sometimes you're going to find that the homes are actually going to sell for much more. So in a market like now, the best comps to look at is actually what homes are selling for at the peak of the market when we are seeing this kind of bidding war last March. So if you're looking to win an offer in today's market, you might want to be looking at what the highest sales were last March as opposed to what they've been selling for in November, December of last year.

The next thing that you're gonna want to consider is if you're able to make a pre-emptive offer or not. Now pre-emptive offers are when properties holding offers until a certain date, but they allow what we call pre-emptive or bully offer, meaning an offer that can come in and basically push the offer date to be that date and give it sellers a chance to accept that offer. Now pre-emptive offer is essentially going to have to be very strong, with no conditions, you're going to also have to convince the seller that this is going to be the best offer they're gonna receive and that they don't take it, they're gonna regret it.

This is for example when you see homes get listed and sell for over $100,000 asking the first day, that is a pre-emptive offer that came in where the buyer really wanted the house and the seller didn't want to risk waiting for the offer date and took that offer. It's market like these where it becomes very important that you have a good agent representing you, one that understands the market and understands how to negotiate and possibly get you the best deal when you're not negotiating against the seller, but actually competing against all the other buyers out there. In really hot markets like we're entering right now, it becomes so important to make sure that you have someone representing your interests, who knows what's going on, there's going to be a lot of people making offers. And a lot of people not getting homes, if you're looking to get a home this year in 2022, make sure you find someone who's able to help make that happen for you. And the same thing goes for sellers.

Although it is very easy to list your home right now and get a bunch of interests, you're going to want to have someone who's going to be able to understand the market let you know if a pre-emptive is actually strong or if you're better to hold out for offer date. And also to look at who's going to get you the most amount of money on that offer date.

This market moves very fast. So I am looking forward to next week's blog and I'm probably going to write even sooner as soon as we get the stats back to go through the actual numbers of December where we're seeing the numbers increase. The January numbers have started off very strong. We're gonna see a lot of homes starting to come in the market, but we're seeing a lot of bidding wars happening and a lot of record sales happening.

So like always, any questions you guys have, you can always contact me directly. I'm happy to help.