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Customer service is the key to any successful business; and one of the essential elements of providing superior customer service is an optimistic perspective on business and life.

A hopeful, positive attitude is immediately noticed by customers and colleagues alike. And it’s contagious. It’s also an incredibly powerful force that focuses positive energies on any obstacle, and helps lift a person or organization to new levels of success.

This is true even for employees who are not customer-facing, and large businesses that are located far from the customers they serve. Optimism, and the lack of it, can be discerned over a phone line or via email. And it has a tremendous impact on morale, which is also obvious to any consumer.

From an academic point of view, there have been an array of studies proving a strong link between a person’s mental state and physical state, mind over matter. Negative thoughts can make us sick, and a joyful perspective is among the best prescriptions for health and healing. 

Over the years, I’ve collected quotations about the power of optimism that I’ve seen in books, magazines or which have been shared by friends. If I see a quotation about hopefulness, and it makes me smile, I copy it down and save it for those moments and situations that can overwhelm a sunny disposition. Here are a view of my favourites:

“Many an optimist has become rich by buying out a pessimist.”
― Robert G. Allen 

“Optimists are right. So are pessimists. It’s up to you to choose which you will be.”
― Harvey Mackay

“An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; a pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.”
― Winston Churchill

“You’ll never find a rainbow if you’re looking down.”
― Charlie Chaplin

“Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.”
— Colin Powell

“Optimism is the only quality more associated with success and happiness than any other.”
― Brian Tracy

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. … No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.”
― Helen Keller

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
― Anne Frank

“Optimism is the foundation of courage.”
― Nicholas Murray Butler

“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“After 5,000 years of recorded human history, you wonder, What part of 2,000,000 sunrises doesn’t a pessimist understand?”
― Robert Brault

“An optimist is someone who goes after Moby Dick in a rowboat and takes the tartar sauce with him.”
― Zig Ziglar

And perhaps my personal favourite, guaranteed to lift anyone’s spirits:
 
“What day is it?” asked Pooh.
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh.
― A.A. Milne

The Canadian real estate market has continued to grow in 2022, with home sales rising 4.6 percent in February.

That’s according to the Canadian Real Estate Association, which also reported that new listings improved by 23.7 percent in the same time period, with the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Calgary, and the Fraser Valley comprising many of the new listings.

Given the popularity of the Canadian real estate market, here’s some trends to keep in mind if you’re looking to buy a home this year.

People are leaving the big cities

The COVID-19 pandemic made people rethink their living situations. When folks were forced to work from home, many realized they didn’t like the idea of being cooped up in a small condo in the city.

So Canadian home buyers have been seeking out more space, which has sent numerous people from big cities like Toronto into smaller communities like Bancroft, a town with a population of just 4,000. Homes in these kinds of places are much cheaper, but demand is now outstripping the supply.

So if you’re looking to move to a smaller community, be prepared to fight for the home you want.

Parents are helping their adult children buy homes

With the market so hot, real estate observers are seeing an uptick in the number of parents helping their adult children buy their first homes while the getting is good. As the economist Benjamin Tal told The Globe and Mail recently, “You basically see people trying to get into the market before it’s too late.”

This generosity from parents is, in turn, sending prices up, particularly in cities like Toronto.

Housing shortages

There’s been such a housing-buying frenzy in Canada since the pandemic started that the country is running out of housing stock. In fact, according to one report, Canada recently had the fewest houses for sale in at least a quarter century.

This lack of supply, while demand remains strong, has some people wondering if Canada is in a housing crisis. This in turn has led to calls to build more homes in the country, which would be a welcome sight for home buyers – but will not address demand issues overnight.

Canada’s most expensive real estate market

For quite a while, Vancouver was widely known as Canada’s most expensive real estate market. But that has changed.
Toronto recently overtook Vancouver as the country’s most expensive real estate market, according to a recent report by the Royal Bank of Canada.

Toronto grabbed the No. 1 spot not because prices got cheaper in Vancouver, but because prices shot up so high in Toronto. This is another sign of the craziness in the Canadian real estate market.

Prices are expected to continue climbing

RE/MAX projects that Canadian real estate could rise 9.2 percent in 2022. That’s especially intimidating for new Canadian immigrants, who are having a tough time affording property in Canada.

That’s especially relevant because the federal government announced plans in 2020 to bring in about 1.2 million immigrants by the end of 2023 to boost Canada’s economy. Indeed, resident arrival admissions skyrocketed in September 2021, making it the biggest gain in Canadian immigrants in a century.

Interest rates are poised to rise

The Bank of Canada decided to keep interest rates low in January. That means the real estate market will likely remain on fire through the spring – but then rates could be hiked later in the year.

If you’re looking to buy a house in Canada this year, keep an eye on the interest rates and expect competition — you’re not the only one looking.

When we last looked at the outlook for the Toronto housing market at the end of 2019, the coronavirus had not yet spread to North America, affecting citizens en masse.

More than a year later, uncertainty around the impact of the pandemic persists, but there are reasons to believe that the light at the end of the tunnel will increase in brightness as we move farther into the spring season of 2021 after a troubling fall in national sales.

According to housing market insights released in February by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CBoC) in late February, national home sales numbers decreased significantly in the second quarter of 2020 compared to what they were before the global pandemic reached Canada.

The sales drop was likely caused by efforts by the public health department to quell infection rates by placing restrictions on travel. In Toronto around that same time, buyers were more gun-shy about purchasing during the pandemic climate, also slowing real estate sales growth, according to an August 2020 news item about the Canadian housing market based on data from RE/Max Canada and published by PR firm Cision via newswire.ca.

Despite this, growth in housing sales for the provinces covered by the report, including Toronto, had recovered and even exceeded predictions by the end of quarter three of 2020.

It comes as a relief that housing sales have rebounded relatively quickly, partially due to stronger sales for more expensive housing in Toronto and other pricey provinces in Canada.

But it is not exactly surprising.

The CBoC predicted mid-pandemic that the overall national economy by gross domestic product would recover in 2021, and that strong housing sales pre-construction lots in Toronto would help fuel that recovery, according to Price Waterhouse Coopers Canada (PwC Canada) comments about emerging real estate market trends for 2021 for Toronto.

Housing markets across Canada have strengthened overall, and Toronto is no exception. Even during the pandemic, Toronto, the suburbs, and areas farther outside the cities, such as Niagara, were seeing increasing interest in buyers making real estate purchases.

Demand for industrial real estate stayed strong around Toronto during the pandemic, and office space sales and e-commerce distribution centers were predicted to contribute to a rebound, said PwC Canada in its comments.

Most recently, despite the CBoC’s May 2020 prediction that housing prices would fall by nine to 18 percent by the end of that year compared to overall housing prices before coronavirus, prices actually rose, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), reported CTVNews on St. Patrick’s Day.

After covid-19 orders compelled more workforce members to start working from home, in Toronto proper condos became less popular to purchase as people sought bigger properties elsewhere to accommodate home offices, reported the Globe and Mail in an article published in early March.

The surge in condo purchases in the Toronto region helped home resales reach a record high for February 2021, over 50 percent higher year over year. Lowered interest rates likely helped create that promising statistic, according to the article as well as supply shortages.

Prices on condominiums in the greater Toronto area were down nearly 4 percent as of February. Still, at the same time in Toronto, above 40 percent of condos sold for amounts greater than seller asking prices, reported Global News Canada on March 18.

As fiscal year 2021 continues to progress, Toronto is expected to be less of a focus, as the reverberations from the pandemic trickle down to smaller towns outside the area.

Buying a house can be an exciting and challenging experience. It’s a major purchase that usually involves a few different parties with competing priorities: the seller, the real estate agents, and the buyer. When you’re in the market for a house, there are a few rules of thumb to keep in mind that will help you smoothly navigate the transaction and end up with the result that you desire: a new house that’s right for you.

Be mindful of your credit

Knowing your credit score—and understanding how things like your debt-to-income ratio can affect it—can be extremely helpful when you’re buying a home. Do some research on your own financial fitness and be aware of how much you can borrow. You should also know how other big purchases, like furniture, etc., can affect your score, as Natalie Schwab mentions in this Redfin blog.

Find a lender and a realtor you can work with

Do your homework when you’re looking for a lender and a realtor. It’s important to establish partnerships with people and organizations that you feel confident in and can trust. Finding a good lender and realtor is one of the most important steps a buyer can take. The home-buying process can be stressful, and you want to be able to depend on the people you’re working with.

Act quickly when you find a house you like

The modern real estate market moves fast, and making an offer on a home shortly after it’s listed can help you save money and get into a house quickly. You should be prepared to make offers as soon as you start looking.

Do some research on the neighborhood

Neighborhoods can be very different at different times of day, and it’s always a good idea to visit a prospective neighborhood in the evening, on the weekend, and during the day, so you can get a better idea of what it will be like. It’s also recommended that buyers take an evening walk or a nighttime drive through a prospective neighborhood to get a feel for how it really is at different times of the day.

Keep your expectations in check

As Taylor Kelly notes in this blog, sometimes first-time home buyers can let their expectations get away from them, thinking that they need to find a home that’s perfect, inside and out, before they make an offer. The reality is that almost any house you purchase will need some work and maintenance, so it’s best to have a keen grasp on what you really need and what you can afford.

Don’t spend time looking at every house in your area

Many buyers are tempted to visit and check out every house that comes on the market within an hour’s drive of where they live. As Julie Ryan Evans notes in her article on Realtor.com, that’s not a good use of a buyer’s time—it’s better to trust your real estate agent to screen homes for you and let you know which ones might be a good fit for your needs.

There’s something about even the term of a ‘B’ mortgage lender that can elicit mild concern, which is natural, but knee-jerk: After all, ‘B’ comes after ‘A,’ so doesn’t it imply something second rate?

The truth is, mainstream lenders like the chartered banks aren’t for everyone. Their tight parameters can mean they’re less-than- perfect for whole swaths of society: If you’re self-employed, new to the country, or have a less-than- perfect credit history, you may not fit.

That’s where ‘B’ lenders come in, and they’re far from second rate. These kinds of lenders aren’t just ticking off boxes and saying ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Of course they’ll look at things like past credit history, but the difference is, if you have something like a bankruptcy, they’ll want to know why and will take it into consideration.

A burgeoning market for B’s

According to a report in the Toronto Star, the borrower rejection rate from A lenders has gone up more than 20 percent since the Bank of Canada imposed a new higher-rate “stress test” for homebuyers who don’t require mortgage insurance.

That’s meant a boom for the B lender industry, and the trickle-down of a quality of clientele it’s not used to seeing. “A lot of these people should be bankable,” or able to get mortgages from the big banks, said Hali Noble of Victoria, B.C.-based Fisgard Asset Management Corporation. But with the new regulations, “they’re not.”

Realtors need to know the new market

With B lenders accounting for larger swaths of the market as big banks tighten up, that significantly increases both their profitability and their presence in the marketplace. With the market slowing in the GTA — down 35 percent from this time last year to now — that’s a simple reality that realtors need to embrace to keep their businesses moving forward.

That means that realtors are going to need to be creative to make sales in this market. Major lenders have significant barriers for most home buyers that weren’t there a year ago — that’s just a reality.

But realtors who know the options and can adjust to the shifting lender market are still in a position to profit. Particularly those who work to establish direct relationships with alternative lenders rather than with mortgage brokers – realtors who do this may be able to avoid the substantial fees of brokers, which can add to the costs incurred by the buyers.