Oliver Foote

Why Are So Many Realtors Broke?

Newsletter 30– Jan 29, 2025

Who’s Making All the Money?

This idea came back to my mind because I heard in the news that the Toronto Real Estate Board saw a decrease in membership for the first time in 20 years. The real estate business was becoming a lot harder for a lot more people. The number of sales from the peak crazy year 2021 has been cut in half, which means literally half as much to go around. So this post is going to be a bit of an analysis about this problem, as well as talking about which realtors are able to continue doing this over the long term compared to those who are leaving the business. I also want to throw in a bit of my own story here, because I’m learning that being a Realtor is much harder than the successful people make it look.

The Famous # of Sales Chart:

This is a topic that if you’ve ever looked into the real estate industry you’ll know comes up time and time again. I’m going to use the area I work in, Toronto, as the case study, but I’m almost certain if you look anywhere else in Canada or the US you’ll find the exact same thing. Here’s a chart talking about the number of home sales each Realtor made in the Greater Toronto Area in 2021.

In 2021 it was a record year for home sales in Toronto with the Covid vaccine being distributed and the interest rates so low to stimulate the economy. 121,000 sales were recorded, which we can assume for simplicity that each had 2 agents on either side. This means a total of 242,000 transactions were completed.

As the chart helpfully points out 32.5% of realtors made ZERO sales. Which is a TON of Realtors. I’ll get into the numbers a bit later, but doing ZERO sales means that the decision to be a realtor is costing people. From my own lived experience, I’ve averaged around $7,000 in random licensing fees, desk fees at my brokerage, and misc fees, just to stay licensed and run my business. Which quite honestly I do very cheaply compared to the marketing spend of some other Realtors. I know there are cheaper ways to stay licensed than what I’m doing, for example going with discount brokerages. But it would still run me probably around $3,000 a year bare minimum to stay licensed. Which isn’t an insignificant amount of money.

Looking at some more stats. The average home price in the GTA at the time was around 1.2 million dollars. Assuming an average commission of 2% after brokerage splits, fees, and expenses for listing a home and sharing a commission with another agent. The net income on a sale per side would have been around $24,000. In my opinion, this means that you’d need to be making around 3+ sales per year in order to survive in the business, considering all the other fees and targeting the median income of around $60,000. Doing 3 sales and having a net income of $60,000, is a pretty nice deal, but I’ve also learned that it’s not something everyone is capable of doing. As evidenced by the chart, the competition is stiff, and the few winners really take the lions share in this business. The top 10% of realtors do almost all of the business while the other 90% are picking up scraps by comparison. So what makes these top 10% or top 1% so special?

Visibility Trumps Ability:

Going back to the chart for a second, you’ll see that based on my rough math on 3 sales, about 50% of realtors are making barely enough to get by or not getting by at all. So what are they doing? Are half of realtors working part-time? Are they delusional? What’s going on? I think it’s a bit of everything above. Many people who are doing less than 3 sales per year are probably doing it part time, maybe they only sell their own properties, or they just aren’t cut out for the competition. They my also just be unwilling to spend money to market themselves, which as you’ll see below. Is quite an important thing to do.

I think there should be a big disclaimer before people enter the real estate industry that they need to budget around $10,000-20,000/year or more just to dedicate towards a marketing campaign. This might seem like a lot of money to someone just starting out. But I can tell you from what I’ve seen working on a team the amount of time, money, and effort it takes to really take this career seriously. If you aren’t willing to invest either an enormous amount of time or money in marketing, you will likely die a slow painful death in this industry along with the 90% of agents who do less than 10 sales a year.

Most Sellers Sell With The First Agent They Call:

Real estate is an industry of visibility. There have been stats and datapoints showing that most people only know the names of 2 or 3 realtors off the top of their head. When they go to sell their home, most homeowners only interview 1 realtor (per National Association of Realtors in the US). What this means is that you have to be the first Realtor who comes to mind for a homeowner. But most homeowners only sell once per 7 years. So if you want to be doing lots of business, you need to be the first that comes to mind in hundreds, if not thousands of people’s minds. If you are able to accomplish this you’ll likely be one of, if not the only one potential sellers will call to list their house. You can be a complete dunce, an arsehole, rude, etc. BUT, as long as people know your name, and you’re the first one they call. You’ll likely do more than ok in the real estate business.

Selling Agents Rule The Business:

Another important thing to note is that most if not all of the Realtors who are in the top 1% bubble, are primarily selling agents. Listing homes also happens to be one of the only ways that this business is sustainable long-term. The reason is simple to see. In most markets, but especially hot markets, being a listing agent trumps being a buying agent any day of the week. In a market where there is a ton of competition, and say for example there are 15 offers on a property and the sale numbers are going insane. Only 1 of the buyer agents will earn a commission, and the other 14 agents will have to continue to show their clients properties. It may take them 10-20 or more listings until they earn a commission. If the buyers agent is really unlucky or the buyers aren’t very motivated, they might have spent months or years with clients and never make a sale. However, as the selling agent, you’re almost guaranteed to earn a commission from your listing in a hot market. Obviously, some sellers have unrealistic expectations, may be unmotivated, or the house might not sell for various other reasons.

Even in a cold market, as the selling agent, you still have the advantage. You aren’t worried about scheduling appointments, or doing x number of showings per week in order to try and find something your clients like. You make sure to present the property well, take good photos, set a good price, work with your sellers, and wait for other agents to bring you offers and you negotiate for your clients. As a listing agent it’s feasible to have 20 listings up at a time. Buyers agents will show your listings to their buyers, that’s like having an army of people working for you to get the house sold. But once you’ve staged, listed, and marketed the property on all the usual channels, as a Listing Agent it becomes a waiting game, rather than a chasing game, and you can spend your time seeking other listings. Meanwhile, as a buying agent it is almost impossible to show 20 properties in a day and even if your clients do find one that they like, you may get beat out by other buyers or the seller may be unwilling to sell, and you have to keep on keeping on. Being a buying agent simply does not scale beyond a certain point.

What’s holding Agents back?

I’m sure you’ve heard stories of people who enter the business and immediately are making tons of money and tons of sales. How are they doing it? The simple answer is that they are probably much more willing to spend money and take risks than your average realtor. They probably have a pre-existing network of people that already know and trust them and have good relationships with. They’re also probably a competitive person. Lastly, they understand that the name of the game in real estate is selling and put their time and energy into becoming a selling agent not a buying agent. Which is why almost every single real estate billboard you see talks about how “I’ll sell your home in x days!”, or “Our listings sell x% above market average”, or one I really like, “top 10 things to do when selling your home. 1. Call me. I’ll handle the other 9.” All of these Realtors with these big marketing campaigns know that selling is the way to go. Side benefit, you might get a few buyers calling you as well. No reason to turn down business.

Concluding Thoughts:

I think we can surmise that the 50% of agents who aren’t surviving are likely missing one of the key components I mentioned. Likely, they aren’t willing to put in the time or the money that is required to become the top agent that people will think to call when they sell their homes. They probably aren’t thinking long term about the business model and what is sustainable. I think a lot of agents may also be scared of trying to list a home. From experience I know that it can seem like a daunting task to get a home picture ready and staged properly, you’ll likely have to put in some money up front to do it the right way as well, with the possibility you don’t see a penny of that money ever again. But it’s important to realize that if you’re unwilling to learn how to be a listing agent, you should probably exit stage left before you go broke. You’re competing for peanuts with the 90%, not the big prizes with the top 10%.

That’s going to do it for now, this post is a bit more brief than usual. I originally wanted to discuss a bit more about my own finances. TL;DR: I’ve discovered that between owning a car and being a realtor I’m burning around $14,500 per year. I’m not sure how relevant the discussion about my personal life goals and finances would be to this blog. But I’ll just leave you with this thought. Owning a car is not a good financial decision, unless it makes you much more money than it costs you. Being a realtor who does less than 3 sales a year and doesn’t have a business plan that leads to being a listing agent is also not a good financial decision. In order to be a Realtor you almost certainly need a car. Meaning that owning a car solely to be a Realtor, can be a VERY bad financial decision if you’re not serious. Thanks for reading, hope you found it interesting or useful. As always.

Keep Investing,

Oliver Foote

Subheading: The blog this week is discussing: “Why are most Realtors broke?” You may have heard about why some Realtors perform better than others. There are some fundamental reasons, and I discuss what those are in the post. Also BoC cut rates by 0.25bps! Will this help buyers? Certainly should.

This Weeks Blog Post:

Why Are Most Realtors Broke?:

The question, should you list homes or should you help buyers?
Why some Realtors do better and outcompete others.
The crazy cost of Realtor fees, just for the privilege of being an agent.
And more…

Read the full article here: https://oliverfoote.ca/why-are-so-many-realtors-broke/

Market News:

The Bank of Canada cut interest rates on Wednesday Jan 29th. This means that the overnight lending rate now sits at 3%. For us normies, that means that the prime lending rate at banks is now at 5.2%. With some banks offering prime – 0.3% on 5 year variable rate mortgages. That puts the mortgage at 4.9%. The 5 year bond yield, which determines fixed rate mortgages, is sitting at 2.8%, which is nearing a 52-week low. You’ll likely start to see 5-year fixed rate mortgage below 4.5%, with some as low as 4.2%. If yields drop enough to the point where we start to see a leading 3 on mortgage interest rates, I believe this will be a psychological breaking point and people will return to the market in droves. Potentially just in time for the seasonally hotter Spring market. If yields continue to fluctuate the way they have been, or the tariff war heats up with the US. It is possible that yields go up, the BoC has suggested they may even have to raise rates again. This would mean that the market would be unlikely to see a significant rebound this year.
A new AI model just hit the Interweb, DeepSeek AI. This AI large language model (LLM) came out of nowhere from a Chinese company. They were able to train the model for a fraction of the cost of ChatGPT, while delivering comparable performance, and also being Open Source (free). This news caused the market to fall somewhat on Monday. NVIDIA, the leading chip maker supplying OpenAI (and all the other big tech firms) with very expensive AI hardware to run their learning models on, saw a dip that caused NVIDIA to lose $600 Billion dollars in market valuation in one day. The following day it recovered around half that loss. Another model built by this firm was able to compete and outperform with one of the best image generation models currently available.

Stock Market Performance as of Wednesday Jan 29, 2025:

S&P 500: 6,039.31 (+2.91% YTD)

NASDAQ: 19,632.32 (+1.82% YTD)

S&P/TSX Composite: 25,473.30 (+2.31% YTD)

Macroeconomics Statistics:

Canada’s CPI Inflation Dec 2024: 1.8% (0.1% Decrease from Nov 2024)

Current BoC Benchmark Interest Rate: 3.00% (0.25% Decrease on Jan 29, 2025)

Unemployment Rate Dec 2024: 6.7% (0.1% Decrease from Nov 2024)

Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Real Estate Stats – December 2024:

November 2024 Average Selling Price All Home Types: $1,067,186

Y-o-Y (comparing Decembers) % Change in Average Selling Price: -1.6%

YTD Number of MLS Sales: 67,610

YTD % Change in MLS Sales (compared to this time last year): +2.5%

Y-o-Y (comparing Decembers) % Change in MLS Sales: -1.8%

Number of MLS Sales in December: 3,359

Y-o-Y (comparing Decembers) % Change in Active Listings: +48.5%

Number of Active Listings in December: 15,393

Inventory Available: 4.58 Months (Increase from 3.71 Months in November 2024)

Market Type: Buyers Market

The Problem With Youth Unemployment in Canada

Economics: Canada’s GDP, and Employment:

There have been a lot of interesting developments happening in Canada related to employment that I think are worth discussing. I’m going to explain why Canada has one of the highest youth unemployment rates it has ever seen, why Canada’s GDP growth has actually been a negative for citizens, and how politics are influencing this issue and what people in power are starting to do about it.

Toronto and Ontario Lag Behind Canada:

The first topic I wanted to touch on is unemployment in Canada and more specifically in Ontario and Toronto where I now live. The unemployment rate in Toronto in November 2024 was sitting at 8.2% which is higher than Hamilton (6.7%), Kingston (5.8%), Ottawa (6.1%), St. Catherine’s (6.6%), and almost every other major city in Ontario except Windsor (8.5%). Toronto’s unemployment rate is comparable to Northern Ontario where work is notoriously hard to find (8.4%). The overall unemployment rate in Ontario was 7.2% which is higher than the national rate of 6.8%. Why is Ontario doing worse than the country as a whole and why is Toronto doing worse than the rest of the province? Let’s find out.

Overshooting Immigration Targets:

Unemployment is the symptom, not the cause. In order to find the cause we need to understand how unemployment works in the first place, and this is generally just a case of supply and demand. But there are other factors at play, like interest rates, immigration and migration, investment etc. As we have all been made aware by now, Canada overshot it’s immigration and migration numbers by a significant amount in the past couple years and the government is beginning to try and put more restrictions on people coming into the country. Generally speaking, Canada has always been friendly to immigration, especially people who are highly skilled workers and are able to contribute positively or fill needs in our economy. It has been stated many times over that the only way for Canada to maintain it’s pension plans and continue growing GDP and productivity is through immigration. If immigration is such a good thing, why have we decided to cut it down? Well part of the reason is that we have nowhere to put people, housing has become such a large issue and pain point, and renting or buying almost anywhere in the country is becoming extremely unaffordable. People will come here, and expect to find a reasonable home and realize that a huge portion of their paycheque is going towards their rent or mortgage. This doesn’t explain unemployment, but it does help explain some issues we have with our economy as a whole.

Highest Household Debt in G7 Curbs Spending:

Another factor in our problematic economy is that Canada has the highest household debt to income ratio in the G7. Meaning that people in Canada are extremely overleveraged on their homes and rent payments. This affects the economy in ways that people may not understand. Traditionally the people who spend the most money tend to be middle class, and spending money is what stimulates the economy and leads to growth and expansion. What has happened over the past few years with the skyrocketing costs of housing, the expensive mortgages that people are renewing into, and general high inflation. Is that people do not have excess money to spend, and consumer confidence is quite low.

Employers Pull Back Investment:

If people are not spending, there is no reason for companies to make investments in their workforces and R&D new products when there is no demand for those things, and in many cases shrinking demand. We now find ourselves in a situation where our GDP per capita (per person) has actually gone down at the fastest rate in the G7. This is a much more accurate measure of quality-of-life changes, as compared to overall GDP growth. Part of the reason per capita is down is because we’ve let in so many people (over a million in 1 year). The overall GDP has gone up compared to a year ago, but per person has gone down. Without all these extra people boosting our numbers we’d be in a technical recession. The way that falling GDP per capita manifests in people’s real lives is the realization that their money doesn’t go as far as it once did and struggling to afford and adjust to fewer things, fewer luxuries, fewer benefits that come with a growing economy. Life has become more difficult and paying bills has become more challenging in the past couple years for the grand majority of Canadians. The average money that Canada produces, per person in the country, has gone down, there is literally less to go around. But the economic headlines don’t usually focus on GDP per capita, they focus on GDP and proudly promote the fact that our economy is (technically) growing.

Newcomer Credentials Not Recognized:

Because of all these factors: high interest rates, high levels of household debt, low business investment, declining GDP per capita, and millions of people coming to Canada, we are suffering an unemployment problem that is getting progressively worse. These problems are also making it even more challenging for all the people and students who come here. I don’t believe that people should expect handouts, but by the same token I’m not sure that it’s fair that we are telling people to come here, and then they’re met with the reality that there’s just no work for them or their credentials aren’t recognized or a million other hurdles are put in their way to succeed. Work is becoming harder and harder to find due to the above, this leads to strains on public services, food banks, and more. By allowing the sheer number of people to come into the country that we did, we are effectively draining our own resources at breakneck speed. Stack on top of this our housing construction issue which is a whole other topic for a whole other blog, and we’re just squeezing people for everything they have. High cost of housing, poor employment, the picture is bleak. A lot of the economic factors I’ve mentioned are leading to the cost of home construction to become un-feasible for builders, and this will lead to a renewed shortage of housing about 3-5 years from now, which is really not what we need added to the pile of problems.

Historically High Youth Unemployment:

Let’s discuss youth unemployment, I’ve been reading some scary things about the 15-24 age group. The core age group 25-54 is currently experiencing above long run average employment levels, the youth age group is not faring nearly as well. As of last year, employment was at somewhat normal levels for Ontario youth, hovering around 11%. But in the latter half of 2024 it has jumped to around 17% and is getting worse. This is problematic because getting a job is important to development for a lot of young people. Your first crappy customer service job motivates you to find a better job, internships lead to future full time roles, and you learn important life skills and how to work with others. These employment numbers getting worse are not only bad right now, but will be bad for the future workforce, youth unemployment is a crisis. France has declared youth unemployment a national crisis, and their numbers are better than ours, what does that say about us? These numbers are also directly impacting a lot of university graduates because it points to the fact that companies are hiring fewer and fewer new grads in an already extremely challenging environment to find work.

University Graduates Struggling to Find Work, Hiring Freezes:

This data backs up what I’ve been hearing anecdotally. I graduated from Engineering in 2023 and I’ve been talking to others who graduated from school around the same time I did. I’ve heard stories of people searching for work for over 7 months to a year and a half AFTER graduation to find work (many still looking). A client of mine that I spoke to a month ago who works for a materials engineering company is currently in a hiring freeze and knows of many other companies who are doing the same. This is as of November 2024. Every engineering graduate I’ve recently spoken to agrees with me when I make the comment, “I wasn’t aware when I started school, that part of the gig would be moving to the US.” Not just to find a job that pays well, but to find any job AT ALL! You suffer through years of engineering just to continue to suffer for another year or more to find a Canadian engineering job, it’s extremely disheartening and I don’t blame people for feeling disenfranchised with Canada or their expensive educations because of it. I can think of a greater number of people from my engineering cohort who are working in the US than those who are working in Canada. The ones who are working in Canada are only doing so because they are international students and have no other choice (or worked their butts off applying), but would much prefer work in the US, and likely will once they are Canadian citizens. I don’t know how else to say this, but we simply don’t have enough jobs in Canada and Ontario to keep people from leaving, and the US benefits from all these people we’ve spent (partial) taxpayer money educating.

Employers Hiring for Experience:

Another relevant point here is that as companies are cutting costs, tightening their belts, and possibly laying off highly qualified workers, why bother hiring a new grad you have to train from scratch where there is a pool of much more experienced, more qualified people for you to choose from. This contributes to the bleak outlook for youth employment. The numbers back this up because employment of core workers is steady and rising, while it is falling for youth. Diverging a bit from the data again, I read recently a comment from a Canadian online forum that you used to be able to just walk into pretty much any retail store and ask for a job and you’d be hired in a jiffy. But even these basic jobs are much harder to come by and staffed frequently by overqualified workers, or workers who aren’t getting paid properly and are becoming harder to find.

Part-Time Work Replacing Full-Time Work:

Another concerning fact is that we are losing full-time jobs almost at the same rate that we are gaining part-time jobs. Our employment situation is actually much worse than the numbers make it seem, full-time jobs are being replaced by part time-jobs and gig work. This is a problem and underscores that quality of life has likely declined for a significant portion of the population. Full-time stable employment is becoming a thing of the past for many people and they are replacing it with one or more part-time jobs. Along the same vein is underemployment, Canada is notorious for this. Everyone has a story of when they discovered that their Uber driver was a doctor in their home country. I don’t have any issue with doctors having to go through recertification and a couple years of training to get up to speed on how we do things here. But there are no spots available for them in residency programs and yet we have a huge shortage of family doctors! What are we doing here?

“98% of Graduates Are Employed”… at McDonalds:

I feel similarly when I learn a recent university graduate is working at McDonalds just like they were in high school. The only difference is that they have a 4-year university degree and are $30,000 more in debt. The situation here is quite frankly bizarre. This reminds of an ad that I would often see in Hamilton that made me laugh while I was on the bus to and from McMaster University. Brock University was advertising that “98% of [it’s] graduates were employed within 2 years of graduation.” No mention of whether those graduates were employed in their field or a related field or if they were using their degree at all for that employment. So I would always joke “yeah and 50% of them are working at McDonalds or underemployed.” It’s not impressive at all that after 2 years out from school you might finally decide to move out of your parents basement and start working literally any job to pay your students loans back. I knew it was bad 5 years ago, and it’s only gotten worse thanks to all these knock on effects of the pandemic and other world events.

Why Toronto is the Epicenter:

So back to the question I posed at the top. Why is the employment rate worse in Ontario and Toronto than the rest of the country? The answer lies mainly in the number of people that choose to come to the province. Ontario is the largest province, has the most schools, and brings in the most people. But we also don’t have as diverse of an economy as the US. We are not the profit center of Canada, that honour goes to our silicon valley, Alberta and their oil. We don’t have the most profitable enterprises in the country, yet we see the most people coming here. Demand to live and work in Ontario and Toronto is much higher than supply, therefore we see the phenomenon’s I have illustrated. This supply-demand imbalance is also somewhat of a contributing factor to all the issues I posed above related to youth unemployment, people leaving Canada, and our false GDP problem, it also underscores the importance of the governments of Toronto and Ontario taking these issues seriously and trying to identify solutions to all these problems. Much of the problem does still lie with the Federal government’s regulations and Bank of Canada policy. But employment, especially for youth, is something I believe needs to be addressed by all levels of government on top of what they’re already doing with housing and population.

Keep working hard,

-Oliver

Get Lazy & Build Relationships

Update Dec 14, 2024: Added Newsletter Email Archive at End of Post.

I was having a discussion today with my co-workers and we were (very professionally, might I add) complaining about all the times people have asked us to do something that should have been understood to be the other (third party) persons responsibility. I recently had multiple experiences where I was roped into doing someone’s work for them. A good example of this is that twice in the last month I would probably have never received my a commission cheque if I hadn’t followed up and insistently asked to get paid (weeks after I was supposed to, might I add). So all of these things just stacked up and got me thinking. If there are so many people being so lazy out there and making good living wages just doing the bare minimum. Making other people do the work for them, am I missing something? Should I be more lazy? Another word for this type of lazy would be “delegating”, but I’m not sure where the lines are between, favours, delegation, just plain lazy. So I want to unpack this a bit and talk about what lines I think are reasonable and how to better delegate work if that is a part of your job. Getting people to do things is never easy.

Delegation, the thing that all managers have to do and will become very familiar with in their day-to-day work life. If you are trying to get someone to do something. What is the best way to do it? Well for starters, generally speaking, paying someone to do tasks is a good motivator. I work 100% for commission, so when I’m asked to do something I’ll take a bit more convincing, because if I can’t draw a line from point A to point B, and I find I’m quite generous with my time and my lines, the motivation to get that thing done just sometimes isn’t there, especially if I feel like I’m just handing out favours left and right. But I have come to realize that there’s a lot more to working on a team, even if it’s commission only, than just “how will this help me get paid.” It’s important to see the bigger picture, spend time planning for future business, and in general building good relationships with the people you work with so if you do need a favour they’ll be more willing to oblige. It always helps if there’s a trade of some kind. For example, I recently moved to Toronto and borrowed a truck from my company and proceeded to lose the gas cap (tired brain, left it as the gas station). In exchange for using the truck and the lost gas cap, I helped de-stage a few homes. Which to me was a decent enough trade to motivate me to be there.

If you have people who are working for a salary, you might be thinking, “well I’m paying them, they should just do whatever I tell them to do.” This is partially correct, but employees can sometimes box themselves in and think in the mindset of, “I was hired to do a certain thing for you, and anything outside of that is someone else’s job, so I won’t do it.” This again, is where good old trading comes in, people are selfish. Blame self-preservation. But even generous people can have a limit on how much “unrelated to their work BS” they’re willing to put up with. Therefore, if you can make it extremely clear, what someone will be getting or has already gotten, in exchange for them doing something that might not be in the job description for you, it becomes a lot easier to get them to do that thing. I would largely frown upon using a power imbalance to your advantage here, or threats, that’s a great way to build a culture where no one trusts anyone else. Think long term, be polite, and be helpful to others and they’ll do the same for you. There’s also something called building goodwill, some people will take advantage of it, but if you’re in a bit of a lower position, or you’re just starting out on something, you may find it a good idea to put up with a bit more BS. Because when you need a favour from someone higher up, they’ll be much more wiling to help you out, obviously safety first, don’t do anything unreasonable.

I’ll be honest, I’m a complete novice at this organizational behavior thing, I took one course in university about it, and it didn’t involve much psychology. More macro scale how companies behave, all of what I’ve written so far mainly comes from observations, chatting with others, and personal experiences working. On an individual level it’s much more important to have frank conversations with people about what they are thinking and how they are feeling about their work. Sometimes you may just be asking someone to do something that they are clueless about and they might not be willing to admit it because of their ego. Everyone can fall into little traps like this and it’s important to keep good relationships, ask people how they’re doing, and try to see the human behind the work.

I’m going to move on to somewhat of a tangent right now. But something that I find irritating when it comes to employment, is that people teach good management principles that are something along the lines of “help people, help them fail fast, people make mistakes and sometimes you have to fix them.” Some companies are just completely cutthroat and if you underperform their metrics it’s game over, but most will have some amount of leniency. The part that bothers me is when they’re hiring for an entry level position and require 5 years of experience, and during the interview seems like you’re expected to know how to do the job at their company already using their very specific software’s and systems that they’ve built internally. Let’s not even get into the online application portal hiring process. For the love of God, don’t spend a minute online until you know someone. You’re better off spending just an hour a day talking with people even loosely in the field your interested in vs. spending 4 hrs a day applying to jobs on portals where no one will ever read your resume. Give yourself a chance. Yes in the era of the internet and social media, I’m telling you the best way to get a job is talk to people. Interesting how that hasn’t changed.

Back to the regularly scheduled programming. So how do you harness your inner lazy to get more things done, and how do you stand up for yourself and your own productivity and time. Prioritizing is very important, you want to make sure you know what you are doing, and when you are doing it, so if someone asks you “hey can you do this thing for me,” you do not have to default to saying yes. I don’t want to sound like I’m telling you as an employee to NOT do what you’re being told to do, but I do want you to take responsibility for your own time. I think if you’re self employed this is extra important, health and fitness are important aspects of performing at your best, so schedule in that time, an appointment with yourself if you will. I now have a bit of a wonky schedule and work on specific days in Toronto and Mississauga. So if I’m asked to do something in the city on the day which I’m not available there “I’m all booked up.” Even if I end up not having much else to do in the other city on that particular day. Setting boundaries and lines for yourself is important. But it is also very important to be flexible to good opportunities when they present themselves. There’s a balance that needs to be walked, and depending on your job you may have more flexibility for one type of thing and less flexibility for another, you have to learn where it is important to move your schedule around and where it can wait.

By the same token, you’ll be surprised how many people are willing to help you simply if you’ve been helpful to them or you are a nice person. Just asking someone to do something will often result in them obliging even if it’s a slight inconvenience, no one wants to be perceived as unhelpful. Obviously, this can be taken advantage of and I don’t recommend doing so. But if it’s nothing too crazy, maybe you’re just asking for 5 minutes of advice, or you just want to learn something. Many people, even people who’s time costs more than your annual salary, are willing to oblige and help someone out if they’re asked nicely.

For example, if I see someone marketing a home in a way that I haven’t considered before, I’ll just give them a quick call and ask how they did it, if they’re a person with a collaborative attitude who wants everyone to do better, they’ll have no problem telling me exactly what they did. Complimenting someone on something they’ve done that you liked, and then asking for advice on how you can do it yourself, is probably the easiest way to get someone talking and willing to help. Remember, when building relationships it’s not about yourself, the more questions you are asking the other person about themselves, the more engaging they’ll find the conversation. People are extremely willing to help out if you take a genuine and personal interest in them and not necessarily in their work. Usually, work is just a small part of a person’s bigger life and getting to know not just their work but other things about them as a person can be very helpful in asking for favours and building good relationships in general. Like anything practice makes perfect when it comes to building relationships, start small, get a bit outside your comfort zone, and keep trying.

That’s all for now, this is a bit of a shorter one, had a big move to the big city recently (I smell opportunity!) and haven’t had much time to pump this out. But hopefully you are able to take a few things away from this and find that people are often more than willing to help out, as long as you are polite and come across and helpful yourself, and take an interest in the person behind the thing they do.

Keep investing,

-Oliver

Newsletter #27: How Being Lazy Can Help, Interest Rate Improvements, 2025 Market Acceleration

This Weeks Blog Post:

Get Lazy & Build Relationships:

Talking about how to get other people do (politely) do what you want them to do
Management strategies for employees
Learning to build relationships with people instead of wasting time in front of your computer

Read the full article here: https://oliverfoote.ca/get-lazy-build-relationships/

Trreb Market Stats Nov 2024:

Winter is slowly moving in, bring on the winter sports! In sharing some warmer news the Greater Toronto Area home sales increased strongly on a year-over-year basis in November. Many buyers benefitted from more affordable market conditions brought about by lower borrowing costs. The number of new listings were also up compared to November 2023 but by a much lesser annual rate. This is resulting in tighter market conditions and contributing to overall average price growth compared to last year. With the momentum we are experiencing I’m expecting a bit of a slow but steady market recovery in 2025.

There were 5,875 home sales through November, up by 40.1% compared to 4,194 sales reported in November 2023. Total active listings on the MLS® System amounted to 21,818, up by 30.2% year over year. November sales were up month-over-month compared to October. The average selling price was up by 2.6% compared to November 2023 to $1,106,050 in the GTA overall.
Toronto’s Regional Real Estate Board Chief Market Analyst, Jason Mercer, recently stated that on a seasonally adjusted basis, the average selling price edged slightly lower compared to October. Although market conditions have tightened, particularly for single-family homes, the detached home market in particular experienced average annual price growth above the rate of inflation, particularly in the City of Toronto. However, the condominium apartment market continues to experience lower average selling prices compared to a year ago. Condo buyers are benefitting from a lot of choice, giving them negotiating power. This will attract renter households into homeownership as borrowing costs trend lower in the months ahead.

I wish you and your family a fantastic holiday season and I look forward to connecting with you very soon. Happy Holidays!!

Other News:

It appears that despite the proposed tariffs from our neighbors to the south, the Bank of Canada may still be on track to cut interest rates tomorrow (Dec 11, 2024), with some predictions anticipating another 0.5% cut, looking at 5 year bond yields after a bit of a pop post election they have begun to trend back down to the lows we saw in October 2024. If this trend continues going into the holidays and the New Year, we can expect buyers to be pleasantly surprised by how much their purchasing power on a fixed mortgage has improved.

Above chart from marketwatch.com

On top of this a slew of NEW mortgage rules will be coming into place on Dec 15, 2024 (you can learn about them at my YouTube presentation here: https://youtu.be/8XyHEV1c7R4) which for first time buyers will instantly provide them with an improvement to their purchasing power as well.
You can see below the difference that a 1% change in interest rates makes to the potential mortgage amount someone can afford on the same 3200 budget.

With low-down payment mortgages being allowed up to 1.5 million dollars this also will improve affordability in some slightly more expensive markets and bring a wider array of potential buyers to those homes.

Above chart made by yours truly.

Stock Market Performance as of Tuesday Dec 10, 2024:

S&P 500: 6,044.60 (+27.44% YTD)
NASDAQ: 19,687.07 (+33.33% YTD)
S&P/TSX Composite: 25,565.73 (+22.49% YTD)

Macroeconomics Statistics:

Canada’s CPI Inflation Oct 2024: 2.0% (0.0% Change from Sept 2024)
Current BoC Benchmark Interest Rate: 3.75% (0.5% Decrease on Oct 23, 2024, next decision: Dec 11, 2024)
Unemployment Rate November 2024: 6.5% (0.1% Decrease from Sept 2024)

Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Real Estate Stats – November 2024:

November 2024 Average Selling Price All Home Types: $1,106,050
Y-o-Y (comparing Novembers) % Change in Average Selling Price: +2.6%

YTD Number of MLS Sales: 64,277
YTD % Change in MLS Sales (compared to this time last year): +2.7%

Y-o-Y (comparing Novembers) % Change in MLS Sales: +40.1%
Number of MLS Sales in November: 5,875
Y-o-Y (comparing Novembers) % Change in Active Listings: +30.2%
Number of Active Listings in November: 21,818

Inventory Available: 3.71 Months (Increase from 3.5 Months in November 2024)

Market Type: Buyers Market

Thanks for reading and have a great week! -Oliver Foote

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