Mississauga Real Estate Tips – Lessons from the Market!

Seasoned real estate professionals guard you from potential pitfalls, hence it is very important to work with a trusted real estate professional when buying or selling real estate in Mississauga or elsewhere. There are some subtle messages that need to be picked up by buyers and sellers to help ensure that their real estate investment grows over time, and that they don’t get stuck with any bad apples. These lessons come naturally over time, with experience.

I am sharing three recent experiences here with you. Hopefully, you will be warned in time, if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Mississauga Real Estate Tips – Due Diligence with Tenants

I represent many landlords and the default ratio will be less than 1%. Every year I represent a few dozen landlords and help them in buying and renting properties in Mississauga and other parts of GTA. Square One rental market in particular is very hot, and good units don’t stay for more than a week and I was swamped with offers. I had just listed a condo for rent in one of the prestigious towers and I was swamped with offers. One such offer were from a realtor who was rushing me to accept his tenant client. The client had everything: a great job, good T4, rental application, but a missing credit report. There were a couple of red flags for me as a prudent agent working in the best interest of my landlord client. The red flags were in the application things like address was incomplete, previous place of residence didn’t match other supporting docs, there were issues with even the government identities the way they were presented. The agent kept insisting that I accept the tenant as the guy had a great job, and that credit report will follow.

In my many years of experience, I have learnt that when you are being pushed into a deal, there is something wrong somewhere. I refused to give in, and advised my landlord client of the same as well. I got back to the agent saying that my client wants to see full and proper paper work. The agent then admitted that his client had a bruised credit report! There you go – I just saved my landlord client from a potentially bad tenant.

In lease transactions, it is very important to never let your guard down, or succumb to pressure A bad tenant can make the landlord lose confidence in real estate investment market, when your goal is to help them increase wealth over time.

Mississauga Real Estate Tips – Due Diligence in Condo Buying

Here’s another eye opener for real estate buyers. My buyers were interested in a 1,200 sq ft condo ( this size was advertised in TREB MLS listing by the listing salesperson) at a prestigious building in Square One.

Condo price of this particular type of unit in this building hovers around $390 to 400 per sq ft.

I contacted the seller’s agent to provide me with the source of condo square footage. He simply said he took the seller’s word for it. I found this very strange and asked him if he had verified the size with MPAC or builder drawings – and he said no! I was shocked.

One can pull out a report from MPAC for mere $5, and asked him to do the same. As a seller agent, he should have verified this important piece of information.

Sure enough, as per the report, the condo size was indeed 160 sq ft smaller than what the listing said. Now this is a big discrepancy and a big deal. At $390 per sq ft rate, the asking price was off by $62,400. Such situations can open up a chain reaction of real estate lawsuits. All this as a result of negligence on part of the seller agent.

There are no short-cuts in due diligence. Realtors need to ensure they are working in the best interest of their clients, they need to do their homework, verify facts presented on the MLS, instead of just focusing on fast closing of their sales. Small errors can cause legal issues and a bad name in the market.

Mississauga Real Estate Tips – Due Diligence with Offer Clauses

Early this month when I was buying a property in Meadowvale Village for a client, home inspection report showed a defect with one of the appliances. This was a top of the line, expensive appliance. So I added a clause in our offer stating a similar brand make and model appliance that the seller would have to put in.

To our surprise, while the seller replaced the appliance, it was an old and used appliance. By the way, the seller is a real estate lawyer himself! But since we did our full due diligence, there was no way out for him. He had to replace the appliance to match the exact specifications listed in the offer. 

It is very important to fully review the home inspector’s report and add clear clauses in the contract, so that there is no scope for misunderstanding or compromise.

My buyers are extremely satisfied and even wrote me a real estate review on Google

Looking to Buy or Sell? Contact Amit Kalia for a FREE consultation!