I think I’m frozen… or at least my fingers and toes are! I took client J out today in the freezing cold to see some more properties in the downtown core under $180,000. For those of you who know what the downtown market is like, you’ll know that the market in this range is quite hot so listings are slim to none. The only thing you can really get in this tight price range is a studio with no parking so when I bring people to see these, it’s quite eye opening.  It’s one thing to tell someone that the total square footage is 350, but an entirely different thing when they actually feast their eyes on what 350sqft actually is.

We saw a total of 6 places today, which is a little more than I like to show on average, but that was actually the entire availability, so I figured we should just get them all out of the way. There were some pretty decent places along with a fair share of what I call the “reject” suites (i.e. the ones next to the garbage chute, in front of the elevator, next to the stairs, have curved walls to fill in whatever left over space the builder had and you know, the not so good stuff).  When buying a starter property of a compact size, it’s important to get some distinctive or characteristic features such as higher ceilings (9ft +), built ins or fold ups, closet/storage space, square or boxed layouts that best utilize space. We saw some of those, but then of course they come with a higher price tag. It’s not an easy market out there for sure… so now after doing some major contemplating and re-evaluation, it looks like we’re heading to Scarberia next to see what our $180K budget can get us - it’ll be a lot more than a 334 sqft closet downtown that’s for sure!