Barry in the News
The Globe and Mail
REAL ESTATE: HIGH END HOMES Sale of $13.8-million home caps blockbuster spring
Saturday, June 13, 2009 By Jill Colvin
Just sold: an 18,000-square-foot Bridle Path mansion listed at $13.8-million.
The gate home at 32 High Point Road features six bedrooms, 12 bathrooms and a five-car garage. Its interior boasts vaulted ceilings, mahogany and cherry woods, limestone and marble floors, and 14-inch plaster mouldings. It sits on two beautifully manicured acres and includes a wine cellar, servants’ quarters and an elevator.
For all its abundant charms, the house hadn’t sold when previously listed. But the sale now, completed just 14 days after relisting, marks an important turning point: It is the first home listed over $10-million that has sold in Toronto in more than a year. It is also part of what has turned out to be a blockbuster spring for the city’s high-end real-estate market.
May, 2009, ended as the strongest month on record for luxury property sales in the Greater Toronto Area, one of Canada’s leading real-estate organizations said yesterday. A total of 273 properties valued at more than $1-million were sold last month, up 6 per cent from May of last year. That’s more than any month since the Toronto Real Estate Board began keeping count, Re/Max Ontario-Atlantic Canada said, shattering the previous record of 266 set in May, 2007.
“Consumer confidence has definitely returned to the market,” reMax spokeswoman Christine Martysiewicz said. Real-estate agents credit low interest rates and a rosier economic forecast for the recent bounce. Luxury sales have been steadily increasing through the year jumping from just 28 in January to 216 in April, Ms Martysiewicz said.
“you have a lot of people who’ve been sitting on the fence,” said Toronto Real Estate Board president Maureen O’Neill, who is also a broker with Bosley Real Estate Inc. Now that recession fears are easing, those fence-sitters are getting back in the game.
Barry Cohen, a ReMax Realtron broker who specializes in high-end home listings and oversaw the sale of 31 High Point Road, said he started noticing an increase in calls from interested buyers around the end of March. He is currently showing the house next door to 32 High Point, listed at $23-million – the most expensive in the city.
Elli Davis, Royal LePage’s top agent in Toronto, said some buyers who may have wanted to purchase high-end homes have been waiting until they felt the time was right.
“Many people put their plans on hold” said Ms. Davis, who has sold at least six-million-plus homes in the past three months, She said buyers who were â¨waiting for the bottom to hit” believe now is the time to act. Agents have also noticed buyers who have seen their portfolios pummeled by a volatile stock market looking to real estate as an alternative investment.
“I think a lot of people lost faith in the stock market.” Ms. Davis said. While home values in the city have decreased, “mathematically, clearly real estate won.”
Unlike many U.S. cities, who’s markets were crippled by the recession, the average home price in the GTA fell less than 1 per cent from May, 2008, to May, 2009, Ms. Martysiewicz said. And while overall home sale are down year-to-date from 2008, at this rate agents expect final 2009 sales to match or surpass last year’s figures.
Heidi Miller, a Toronto chartered accountant and mother of two, purchase a home in the Armour Heights neighbourhood in March. She and her husband hadn’t been planning to move until they saw that roomy home in their ideal location had been put on the market for $890,000, which they thought was a steal. The jumped and, after a bidding war with two others interested buyers, won the sale.
“We saw an absolutely amazing opportunity,” she said. “it’s truly a great time to buy a house.”
Toronto Star
BUSINESS: Pricey Homes ride out recession
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 By Tony Wong, Business Reporter
Selling million-dollar homes in the middle of a recession is a tough slog. But the market this time around has been less painful than in the pas, say luxury realtor Barry Cohen. “But apart from a bad winter, it looks like we haven’t really skipped a beat.”
“Typically in a recession luxury homes are the first to dive in price and the last to recover,” says Toronto realtor Barry Cohen. “But apart from a bad winter, it looks like we haven’t really skipped a beat.” Cohen sold a home on the Bridle Path for $11.8 million, the highest price for a resale home sold this year. And he currently has 22 homes listed for more than $1 million.
According to a report by ReMax Ontario Atlantic Canada released Tuesday, the market for million-dollar homes in the Greater Toronto Area was actually slightly stronger this year than last. There were 1,706 luxury home sales of $1 million or over in the GTA in the nine months ending in September, compared with 1,687 sales last year, an increase of 1 per cent. The bulk of those sales were made in the last quarter.
“A considerable shift is underway in the upper end,” says Michael Polzer, executive vice-president of ReMax. “Conditions are more balanced across the board.”
The luxury market still lags sales in the overall market, which are up 4.5 per cent compared with last year. But no one thought many consumers would be buying luxury properties during the downturn. During the first four months of this year, sales of luxury homes and condos were the hardest hit, as consumers retrenched. The market came to life when stock markets stage a comeback earlier this year along with promises of bonus cheques on Bay Street.
“That was the green light,” says Cohen. “you had the stock brokers and the fund managers coming back to the housing market.” But it’s still a tenuous recovery. Most luxury sales are in the “entry-level” $1 to 1.5 million range.
Although there are 18 properties in Ontario listed at more than $10 million, luxury buyers are still cautious about entering the upper end of the market, also known as ‘super luxury.” As a result traditional blue-chip neighbourhoods such as Rosedale and Forest Hill are seeing sales down from a year ago, while less prestigious neighbourhoods are gaining sales. And unlike average homes, luxury homes aren’t flying out the door in a week.
Cohen has one York Mills-area home listed for almost $5 million. The 9,500-square-foot heritage home has seven bedrooms and sits on a lot of .04 hectares. It has been on the market for five months, and the original listing price was $5.5 million. It was probably best known as the millionaire’s home in Tommy Boy, a comedy starring Chris Farley, David Spade and Bo Derek.
The priciest home in Ontario is a $23 million, French-inspired chateau on the Bridle Path, built by developer Paul Miklas. It is also co-listed by Cohen.
Most luxury markets are down globally. The big exception is some areas still experiencing growth, such as Asia. The largest sale of a residence has been in Hong Kong, where a condo recently went for $56.0 Million (U.S.), or more than $11,000 per square foot. At just over 5,000 square feet. The condo was large, but not palatioal, although the price certainly was.
In Toronto, it is not hard to hit the million-dollar mark on what would be considered a modest-looking home in some neighbourhoods. As a result, many of the million-dollar sales are happening away from the more expensive central core, as a million dollars doesn’t quite buy what it used to. Areas like the Beach and Riverdale to the east are seeing record prices. The most expensive sale in the Beach this year was for $3.15 million. In Riverdale, the priciest listing is a historic home on a 33 feet by 360 feet lot for $3.89 million. Young professionals trying to get more luxury bang for the buck have also moved up to Thornhill and Richmond Hill, which experienced the highest number of million-dollar homes sales by neighbourhood.
In Oakville, a favourtie with Bay Street bankers, prices were down by almost 20 per cent earlier this year. But prices have bounced back: this year’s most expensive sale was a waterside home for $7 million.
One area that hasn’t done well in the luxury homes market is Hamilton, where sales are down by 32 per cent compared with last year.
National Post
MARKET LEADERS: Teamwork Built for the Customer
2009
In the residential real estate business, where hyperbole goes with the turf, real estate agent Barry Cohen still stands head and shoulders above the crowd. His accomplishments are near legendary.
If you need an example of what Mr. Cohen and his support team at Re/Max Realtron Realty Inc. do on a regular basis, look at their sales so far this year. While media reports were warning that the real estate business had fallen on hard times because of a global recession, Mr. Cohen and his crew were totting up 75 homes sales by the end of August. While many of his sales are found in the luxury home markets of Toronto, including Forest Hill, Lawrence Park, North Toronto and Thornhill, about 60% of them were in the York Mills area, which experts say has become one of the toughest sells in the GTA.
That, however, is not the way Mr. Cohen sees it. “It just takes a bit longer to find the right buyer,” he says. “It also takes the right strategy, which is something we excel at.” Proof of that pudding lies in the prices Mr. Cohen has been able to achieve in an area others dismiss as a tough market. A year-to-date review of the York Mills market reveals that Mr. Cohen outsells his closest competitors by more than two to one, and over the average by 25 to one — impressive numbers indeed.
No task seems too tough for the Cohen team. Earlier this year, he sold a home for the highest price reported during the past two years on the Toronto Multiple Listing Service.
List price was $13.8-million. “Another broker had the listing on and off for two years with little success.We managed to sell it in 14 days after the owner came to us,” he says.
While Mr. Cohen is indeed the master of the area known as C12, bounded by Highway 401 to the north, Lawrence Avenue East to the south, Yonge Street to the west and Leslie Street to the east, he and his multi-lingual sales team cover the entire city, speaking six languages, including Cantonese, Mandarin and Farsi. The team includes Aaron Luftspring, Rita Chan, Bernita Iaboni, Naomi Larry and administrators Hooman Aliary and Karen Draper.
“Each of them brings a specialty. Our clients range from the novice first-timer to the savvy, ‘where-do-I-go-fromhere’ empty-nester,” he says. “But what we all share is a dedication to our clients and that competitive spirit that drives us towards getting the best net for all our clients.”
Doing his best has propelled Mr. Cohen into the real estate stratosphere. In both 2004 and 2006 he was Re/Max Corp.’s top sales person in Canada, and in 2006 No. 3 worldwide in Re/Max global operations. Currently, Mr. Cohen is the No. 1 Toronto real estate agent based on total sales volume as reported by Re States Inc. for July 31, 2009. It compiles its data from the Toronto Real Estate Board’s published statistics.
What sets Mr. Cohen apart beyond his exceptional service is his insight and natural negotiation ability, combined with invaluable experience. “I have been doing this for three decades and have navigated through three major market corrections. Each of them has taught me important lessons, lessons that I can bring to bear on behalf of our clients.” One of those lessons is that a fast sale is usually less important than getting the best price.
Each neighbourhood presents its own challenge, he says. Each has its own pace when it comes to sales and that pace can change on a dime. Mr. Cohen jokes that, “If a home is priced right, it almost feels like it only takes three hours to sell a home in Rosedale, three days to sell a property in Forest Hill, three weeks in Lawrence Park and as much three months in YorkMills. “Demand and supply are in constant play and you have to know an area intimately to achieve the best results.”
In the YorkMills area at the moment, anything priced up to about $1.5-million, which is approximately the average sale price for this area, should almost immediately attract a ready buyer, he says. That ballpark figure is borne out byMr. Cohen’s sales to date.
While Mr. Cohen enjoys sales from $600,000 to double-digitmillion- dollar homes, the average selling price for those 45 York Mills homes was about $2.1 million. “What may be most impressive, however, is that 80% of those sales represented a record price, compared with other recent sales,” he says, something that Mr. Cohen does almost routinely.
The secret of Mr. Cohen’s astonishing success, what lifts the Cohen team well above the pack, is the process they follow. In many ways it seems lifted from a business school text book. Great success lies in the detail, in the planning and in the understanding of the market and the wants, needs and expectations of buyers and sellers, he explains. “We start by preparing a written marketing strategy,” he says. “Then, we follow that plan and strive to share regular daily and weekly feedback sessions with the client. We constantly monitor the market and pursue potential leads.” The process can regularly include full-colour magazine ads, web links to U.S. newspapers, classified ads, full Internet exposure and the personal accompaniment of either Barry Cohen or a team member at every showing, the latter of which makes the difference time and time again.
“High-end Toronto neighborhoods are increasingly global in nature,” he says. “The ability to reach out to buyers wherever theymay be is one of the keys to our success.” But it is in the challenge and negotiations that Mr. Cohen thrives and shines, he says. “A skilled negotiator can make all the difference when it comes to getting maximum price for his sellers or the best price for his buyers,” he says. But that only comes from years of success through more than 30 years of experience and his commitment to net his clients more.