1049 HWY 2, JUST EAST OF DOWNTOWN KINGSTON

Des watched over the hazelnuts planted a half-acre west of the old drive shed. Drove off the thieving jays. He crawled under the shrubs on his belly, belt spike catching in the ground like a stuttering brake. Poured handfuls of what he thought of as fruit into a linen-lined bucket inside that bottom door. Kept the salt pig handy too, and knew about the jug of maple-sweet sherry hidden back of the fireplace bellows. One night his mother appeared on the stone porch above, wailing his father’s name. The snow started near exactly then, three days back now, and next morning the men hacked down the sad black hickory, began building his box.

This is me with my parents and sisters, deep in the Cotswolds. 1970, maybe slightly later, is my best guess. My youngest sister died suddenly, more than a dozen years ago. The other doesn’t talk to us much, and when she does, tells terrible stories. My mother will have been dead two years at the end of April. Dad, from his west-end assisted-living studio, bemoans the bed he’s made for himself and doesn’t always realize she’s gone. I never wore sandals again is just one thing I realise looking at this image, and I still dissociate once or twice a year, sometimes for a week or more, something to do with whatever would happen before or after the shutter slashed past, quick as a falcon, sharp as a blade.

* I found a photocopy of the original photo among my dad’s things when I was packing up his house. He’d stretched the image somehow, as if he’d tried to rip the snapshot from the glass mid-scan, and we all looked about six inches taller. I imagined writing a piece titled Stretching The Truth, something like that. But first I asked AI to fix that elongation, and it added the empty street behind us. A friend suggested it looks now like a film set, a dream state, and that fits really well how much of my growing up feels from this distance surreal, untrustworthy.

1049 HWY 2 EAST AGAIN, PRICED NOW AT $875,000

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 saw signs last month 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-January.

I’VE MOVED TO CENTURY 21 HERITAGE GROUP

For me that’s big news - a new office (on Princess St), fresh faces, fresh approach - but for you, nothing will change much (although I do feel really energized by the decision, and perhaps that will show up in the prose). The branding’s different (it’s sharp), but I doubt most of you would have noticed even that much without my pointing it out.

When I talked to clients before the holidays, most of them couldn’t say where I worked, and really didn’t care. And you have no idea how thrilling that was; it felt like I’d been handed a travel visa.

Speaking of which, I remember an age ago getting off an Air Canada flight in Las Vegas. I was down there to see U2 (back when U2 were still good). The heat when the doors opened, that scorching smack, redolent of palm trees and tarmac, was a thrilling shock to the system. This feels a lot like that.

AND 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.

A BIT OF HISTORY (not a word of it true):

I remember this picture being taken. The photographer was just passing by on the road, on his way to the Islands. That’s my mum behind us kids, and dad’s off to my right. The man with the pipe and the stiff wide chaps is Godwin, and he supervised the building of the house. Horrible man. Regularly, mum would call us in from the orchard behind the house and the kitchen would smell richly of Godwin’s apple tobacco. The man himself would make like he was testing the fresh boards in the living room, those long planks being nailed down just a month back and still bending whenever the fire burned. Watching him it was like he was walking a pine tightrope, performing some modern dance. Mum always looked part petrified and part as angry as she did when the startled horse clattered over one of the barn cats mid-summer, killing it outright, its brain like jam on the flagstones. Dad always knew when Godwin had been through the house too. When he arrived home he’d sniff at the air like a hunting dog. But he was a timid man, always weighing good against bad, conclusion against consequence (mostly as a way of stalling any action, I think) and he worked at figuring out that balance until his arms were so tired he was no good for anything, not bringing in eggs, not even strangling one of the too many ducks.

RECENTLY SOLD

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