How We Sold an Aurora Semi-Detached for 1.3 Million Dollars

In late February 2024 we listed a semi-detached house in Aurora at 999,000 dollars with an offer date and sold it for 1,300,000 dollars. The same client had bought it in early 2023 for 950,000 dollars. What made the difference: a fast, well-timed launch, a rentable walk-out basement, and renovations the owner did while living in the house.

I am Moe Asgarian, a broker in Toronto, and this was our own listing, so I can tell you exactly what moved the price. In February 2024 demand was well ahead of supply, and that is a good market for a seller who has a genuinely good product.

The Aurora Numbers

In February 2024 we listed the Aurora semi-detached at 999,000 dollars with an offer date and got more than 80 showings. Not every interested buyer registered an offer. From the follow-up calls my team made with agents, I believe we could have had more than 20 offers on that February 2024 offer date, but the numbers some of those agents were working with were nowhere near what the house could actually sell for, so they never registered. We sold it in late February 2024, before the Family Day long weekend, for 1,300,000 dollars. For context, another semi on the same street had sold about a month to a month and a half earlier. It did not have this home's features, and in late February 2024 we sold roughly 150,000 dollars above that sale.

Speed, Staging and a Long Weekend

The first reason this worked is that we decided fast. My client told me they were ready to come to market whenever I said go. Because we have a good team, we moved immediately: the touch-ups that had to be done, the painting that had to be done, all of it got handled quickly, the house was staged in two days, photography followed, and we were in the market before the February 2024 long weekend with enough runway to market it properly. We ran online ads, and by my own count roughly 50,000 people saw that listing across the different platforms in February 2024. That is what filled the open houses, where families came through every single day. When demand is that far ahead of supply, exposure is what turns into price.

The Purchase a Year Earlier

The bigger part of this result happened a year before the sale. I bought this same house for the same client in early 2023, at the same time of year, for 950,000 dollars. The agent who had it listed was not, in my reading, the right agent for that house: not from the area, and not motivated enough to sell it well, despite being well into their career. We bought on day one in early 2023. We did not let it get to its offer date or wait for other offers to come in, and we got the seller to agree on a very good number, because the house was worth more than that. You do not often find a house someone bought at 950,000 dollars in early 2023 and sold at 1,300,000 dollars in February 2024, and you should know that my client lived in it and renovated it. As of early 2024, renovating a house like that one cost between 130,000 and 160,000 dollars, depending on the finishes and the details you decide to do.

What Buyers Paid For in Aurora

The single biggest feature was the walk-out basement. It had been turned into a one-bedroom apartment with all the appliances and its own separate entrance, and it could be rented out. With interest rates as high as they were in February 2024, that is the product everyone was hunting: basement income that helps carry the payment and gets you through a hard stretch. The rest of the list mattered too. An attached garage, so the buyer parks inside. Two bathrooms on the second floor, which you rarely get in a three-bedroom house. A powder room on the main floor. From what their agent told me during the February 2024 offer presentation, the buyers were end users and this was the first home they were buying, which fits what I have been saying about this market: it is full of end user buyers.

The One Year Rule and Our Closing Date

One more thing if you are thinking about flipping a property: the tax office will come looking for you and you will pay tax. As of the start of 2024, under the rule the federal government brought in, a property sold less than a year after its closing is taxed on the gain, so you need at least a year between the closing of your purchase and the closing of your sale, and whether you lived in the home matters. That shaped our timing in February 2024. We gave a four month closing so the one year mark would pass. My client had lived in the home, so no tax applied to the gain on the sale. I am not an accountant, so take your own situation to one before you plan around any of this.

What I Tell Buyers and Sellers

Look at the history of real estate in any market and you see the same thing: buying a home is a long-term investment and you have to hold it for years, but in every market there are people who buy very well and make money. To be one of them you have to put emotion aside. When everyone is a seller, it is a good time to buy. When everyone is a buyer, it is a good time to sell. That is the whole secret, and using it means watching the market instead of reacting to it. If you are an end user buying your first home, carrying a home at the interest rates in place in February 2024 was hard work, so you want savings sitting beside you for the mortgage payment and stable employment before you commit. If you are selling, the spring market is the one I point sellers to: banks come out with better promotional rates and more buyers come into the market. And if you are upgrading, from a condo or townhouse to a detached home, or from a three-bedroom bungalow to a two-storey, the market as it stood in March 2024 was not one to let pass you by, because at the higher price points you can negotiate a better discount and end up with a better property than the one you are sitting in.

If you want help making a purchase like this one, or you are weighing a sale, fill out the form at the bottom of this page or book a free consultation with me and my team. Stay well and take care.