The Bubble…

Housing?! Covid!? Tariffs??

No, the bubble I’m talking about today is a concept about an invisible popularity bubble around HRM, and how you could use this to your advantage.

There’s an invisible irregular circle within HRM, that, if inside this circle and the property is priced appropriate to comparables, your demand is High. You’re likely to have strong viewings, pricing power, and accepted offer within 30 days. If you’re on the other side of the line, just the opposite, few viewings, low bids, and may be waiting several months, if not even years depending on the property.

This bubble ebbs and flows, grows and shrinks, has little side bubbles, but the trend is for it to always get bigger, on average, over time. What makes in vary in size? Several factors. There is no better example than the pandemic housing, where the bubble grew to the biggest it’s ever been. It stretched from Tantallon, to Enfield, to Porter’s Lake. Everything seemed to sell like hotcakes. As the craze took it’s natural course, the bubble decided to recede back to a slightly bigger version of it’s pre-pandemic size. The demand normalized but the population increase has made it permanently bigger. This is the biggest factor for permanent increase in size in this imaginary line. As the plans for population growth of getting 2 million people in 35 years, with a disproportionate majority coming into HRM, this will naturally increase the size, it’ll redefine what is thought of, as being “close to the city”.

The bubble even changes with the season. Just like the human body diverts heat back to the core when it’s cold, so does the real estate market. Areas that are on the edge of the bubble, suddenly to seem to hit a wall in the fall. These properties can sit all winter, while properties in the core continue to sell all winter long. Then as we’re hitting the spring season now, the extremities also start warming up.

So, how could I use the bubble to my advantage? To modify an old adage, Buy outside The Bubble, Sell within The Bubble. Now for buying, you want to be as close to the Bubble edge as possible, preferably a place that may have just fallen out of it, an area that normally sells well but has properties that have been sitting all winter, especially if they’ve had a deal fall through. As we’re approaching the busy season and the bubble begins to expand, if you’ve been considering selling, this may be your opportunity to do so, or if you’re property maintains outside the bubble, you may have to consider longer term options until the bubble comes to grow.

Where is the bubble now? At the time of this writing the bubble is growing with the spring market and with what appears to be a relatively balanced market. This line appears to be from Timberlea/Hammonds plains to Fall River, to Lawrencetown.

Old Rules of making wise decisions in Real Estate still apply: Location, Location, Location.