What Should I Say Now

It is not always that easy to write a Blog. It does take a lot of time for me to do so.

That may surprise you. After all, when doing Blogs for the site I worked on before, I was able to produce quite a few of them. If you remember, on some occasions, I used to do several per day. Now, it just is much more difficult for me to be able to write one as frequently.

The reason should be fairly obvious. This Blogsite where I am writing now is completely personal, for my purposes only. I just write when I have the feeling to do so. In addition, one of my desires is to refer you to articles written by my daughter, Melissa, who writes such good stories on so many different features on her own website. She deserves whatever attention I can give her because of the excellent work she does.

What I try to do now is to write something personal at the beginning of each Blog, just as I am doing now, and then deal with other matters that are interesting to me which I have found. On some occasions, I give you my opinion in the story about what my article is about while on others I just want you to know about events that are going on.

I am glad that a number of people read my new website every time I produce a new article. I do try and publicize it a little bit by publicizing it on Facebook but I do not do much more than that. Writing an article is something that I do to keep my "brain" working and, of course, hoping to get people to agree with what I am saying.

Of course, sometimes what I write about at the beginning takes up a lot of space while in other cases, I write about a lot less. After this personal writing, I then tell my dear readers, as I am doing now, that I want them to read the other matters for which I have produced in the rest of the Blogspace. Read on!

MAYORAL ELECTION IN WINDSOR

Just over a week from now, July 27, 2018, nominations will close for those who want to run for candidacy for a Windsor Council office. Interestingly, a few days ago I went to the City of Windsor website to see who is running for Council now. What a surprise I had! There were 4 seats out of the 10 where no one was running yet. Absolutely no one. Now it is changing as Councillors finally start to join up now to be re-elected..

I have to admit that I could not believe it. Until very recently, I only saw one Councillor's name who was running for re-election. That was John Elliott in Ward 2. Neither the Mayor nor the other Councillors had filed their nomination papers at that time. Will they all be running? As I said above, some have just put in their papers.

What is going on now? There is an obvious answer. Why put up your name early on since most people are not interested in the election at this time because of the summer holidays. Wait until the last minute to do so and then just don't start getting serious about running until after Labour Day when the summer holidays are over and people are returning back to their normal life.

Let me talk about one matter respecting the Windsor election: who might be running for Mayor. Up until very recently, I do not believe that a candidate whom anyone expected could be elected was running

The existing Mayor, Drew Dilkens, gets all the publicity he needs these days because he is the Mayor. Reporters will come and do a story on him whenever he calls them. As long as the stories are good, he gets great publicity and, at no cost. Accordingly, there is no need for him to file until the very last minute.

Yet, the question that needs to be asked is whether he'll be running for Mayor at all. Perhaps he has something else lined up now, whatever that may be, but for some reason does not want to mention it for as long as he can. All that he would need to say, in the last possible minute of course, is that he is not running. Waiting that long may mean that opponents just assumed that he would and did not prepare to run for Mayor. Starting at the end of July would not be good for someone who needed to get lots of publicity in the City of Windsor. It just might be too late.

Until now, I assume that everyone believed, as I did, that Fred Francis, Ward 2 Councillor, would run for Mayor just like his brother did. In other words, running for the Mayoral position after only one term as Councillor. Why not? I can only imagine who would be providing him with lots of election assistance based on his own experience in successfully running for that position.

However, he just announced that he is running for Council. I was considerably surprised by that.

Obviously, I thought that Fred would not have to spend a lot of money gaining publicity for himself because that is already out there now. No, he would just need to spend money using attention gathering techniques to gain more positive popularity for himself. That could be done in all kinds of "publicity" events which would make it an easy way for him to campaign. Naturally, if many of the media are in support of him, then one could expect a lot of excellent coverage for his running for office.

I have no idea why the decision was made for Fred to run for Council only now. Perhaps with Matt Marchand running for Mayor and probably the existing Mayor running as well it was concluded that Fred did not have a good chance to win. I think that it was important that he remain on Council so therefore the decision was made that he just seek re-election for his position.

Let's just see what happens and who else decides to be a mayoral candidate in Windsor. Moreover, it should be fascinating to see who's going to run for Council.

HOUSE PRICES IN OUR AREA

I trust that everyone understands that our house prices in this area, no matter how high they seem to get, will generally be behind the price for almost every other city in the Province of Ontario.

Oh I understand that the house pricing here has gone up very high but I also know that the price in these other cities are even higher for a comparable unit.

Just to give you an idea of what I mean, when I moved down here, to Windsor from Toronto, I sold my house in Toronto at a very nice, higher price compared with my original purchase price for that unit. When I bought my new residence in Windsor, its house square footage size was larger and I think that the land size was about twice the size of my Toronto property. Interestingly though, my sales price in Toronto was several times higher than my purchase price in Windsor.

It is the same thing today. Sure, my former Windsor house and the place I'm living in today in Tecumseh have risen very nicely in the last little while. However, my house in Toronto has probably risen so much higher now that I probably would have great difficulty in being able to buy.

Let me just give you an idea of what I mean. Here is a story about London, Ontario. It is useful because it also explains why the prices have increased there::

“The rising price of London homes is outpacing the national trend, a new survey says, as migrating Toronto-area home buyers and limited supply drive up prices.

The median London home price rose nine per cent year over year to $365,686 in the second quarter of 2018, according to the Royal LePage house price survey and market forecast released Tuesday. The median is the midway point between the lowest and highest prices; it is not the average.

The city is among others in Southern Ontario – such as Windsor, Niagara, St. Catharines and Kitchener-Waterloo – that experienced double- and high-single-digit increases compared to the second quarter of 2017.” (London Free Press staff, July 10, 2018) 

Did you know this about Windsor, Ontario? Now you will. It is quite exciting:

“Windsor-area housing prices are skyrocketing, with the local market near the top nationally in year-over-year price appreciation, according to a new survey.

Locally, the standard two-storey, single-family house sold for 20.4 per cent more in the second quarter of 2018 compared to the same period a year ago, according to the latest Royal LePage House Price Survey...

The median Windsor home price rose from $203,885 in the second quarter of 2017 to $245,418 in the same quarter this year. Another reason for escalating real estate prices is the lack of listings, according to the Royal LePage house price survey and market forecast released Tuesday.” (Doug Schmidt, Windsor Star, July 10, 2018) 

While the Windsor price is quite attractive for local owners, just make sure that you understand that a comparable housing London is worth over hundred thousand dollars more.

Here is some additional information that puts this into an even more interesting position when comparing other prices:

“Outside super-heated Vancouver and Toronto, the average Canadian home last month sold for about $440,000, while the same residence in Windsor would be in the $280,000 range”