MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

Not so fast. There is so much more here than meets the eye. A blue tickhound sleeps all morning on that blanket. Could use a run. The smell of foot-deep shitaake, wet fen. Its nails are hooked yellow ivories, sharp as lion’s teeth. The woman in the photograph up on the wall, Penelope Maria, grew up a dancer in Seville, moved here after the war, and made lace wedding dresses through the 1970s in a limestone cottage on Mowat. It was her husband who pilfered the marble for that coffee table, squeezed his Fiat under the low-slung and rusted chain at the mouth of an Italian quarry late September 1952, just before a great rain obliterated access. He tied a slab twice that size to the car’s roof, but it broke in two fleeing the Carabinieri with their ludicrous sirens and their blue lights thrown onto the quarry walls like a rave. Their grandson sent that card on the desk. He trims countertops out by the highway now, landed that job using the family story. There is almost exactly $2600 in the desk drawer, I counted it, that and a solid plan to buy a plane ticket soon as the house sells, see the rest of a world she almost remembers.

NEW LISTING - 19 FIFTH AVENUE

Back in the 1940s Kingston city planners got together and said, “If we get rid of the airport, we can build a house Mark Sinnett will be proud to list eighty-some years from now. Why don’t we do that?” And that, my friends, is the 100% untrue story of how we got here today.

1049 HWY 2 EAST

I don’t know of a more striking house and property. Limestone and sandstone mixed, just 3.5 km east of the causeway, a million miles from the ordinary.

We removed the staging recently. It looked great in there, but I began to feel the look was limiting, that there are many different ways of living in the house. It felt to me that a blank slate was required and I’m pleased with the results. It feels more open-ended now, and there are no more books lined up solely because of the colour of their bindings.

634 FLEET ST - SOLD

Well that didn’t take long. A four-bedroom side-split in Bayridge South. An attached garage, hardwood and shag pile. A majestic pine tree that scrapes the clouds. A realistic price, given the plans you’ll make and what they’ll cost to execute.

THE VIDEO:

The video for this lovely mournful, regret-full song, a favourite this year, was filmed in the basement of my new listing on Fleet St in Kingston’s west end, is not a true statement, though it feels distinctly possible, given how the mood, and the light, and the panelling is identical in both. The lime shag on Fleet is just a bonus, because I’m generous that way.

Dove Ellis’ album, Blizzard, is a marvel, by the way, and you should let it soundtrack whatever’s left of winter.

MORE ON 1049 HWY 2 EAST

There are three ways to price a house.

You can price too high, and argue that a house is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. It’s an effective way to get listings, and to have your sign sitting roadside for months on end.

Or you can price too low and hope for multiple offers that drive the sale price up to at least market value. In this still-soft market that’s quite a risk, but it does move inventory and lower carrying costs for agents and sellers. I don’t like it, but there are times when a seller needs to move in a hurry and so you dust off the strategy and hope for the best.

The third option is to price properly, at a value the data suggests is appropriate. To make the price defensible, reasonable, honest. It’s the method I prefer. And that’s what happened when we began at this lovely heritage stone home under 4 km from downtown Kingston. That starting price months back was $935,000. The comps supported it; I believed in it. But here we are today at a surprising $875,000.

It’s a head shaker. I put it down to the fact that this is still pretty rarefied air - most of the houses moving quickly are in the 500s and 600s. And it’s winter. And Trump is doing what Trump does, and people are scared to spend their money, to make a move unless it’s into a bomb shelter. I get it. It makes sense. But so does buying the home of your dreams when prices are at bottom, which (barring an orange apocalypse) they seem to be. I see signs of a slightly more enthusiastic shuffling into the market from both buyers and sellers. Things seem, ever so gently, to be coming to life. A spring thaw in mid-February.

HERE’S A THOUGHT:

I’m really fond of these signs.

I take my work seriously, and I’ve gone through a few different For Sales over the years, but this most recent design hints most directly at my history as a writer. It feels like a book cover to me, and that intersects nicely with my belief that every house has a story to tell, and also that if all its systems are working well, in mechanical and aesthetic harmony, a house can be a pretty complex and glorious machine for living in (a term stolen shamelessly from Le Corbusier, the Swiss-French architect/planner).

What I’m getting at - and it’s really not complicated - is that I think one of these would look mighty smart planted nice and upright, out front of your place, don’t you, if you decide to sell this year?

The write up will make you proud, I promise, and might even have you wishing you didn’t have to move.

RECENTLY SOLD

MUSINGS