Stop Waiting for the Bottom. Start Getting Ready.

Nobody rings a bell at the bottom of a housing market. I know that sounds like a cliché, but I keep having to say it out loud because people keep acting like the bell is coming.

Here is what I actually see right now: power of sale listings are quietly building, insolvency filings are climbing, and real home prices have already dropped roughly 28 percent from peak levels. That is not a rumour. That is the market doing what markets do after a historic run-up. The inventory of distressed properties is growing in the background while most buyers are still sitting on their hands waiting for some all-clear signal that will never arrive.

Meanwhile, as reported in the Toronto condo market breakdown, developers are quietly offering significant discounts to buyers willing to move without fanfare, even as the public narrative remains grim. The deals are happening. They are just not happening for the people who are not ready.

The Market May Not Have Bottomed. That Is Not the Point.

I will be straight with you: I do not know if we have hit the floor. Nobody does. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

What I do know is that trying to perfectly time a market entry is a losing game for almost every buyer. The people who win in distressed market cycles are not the ones who called the exact bottom. They are the ones who were prepared before the right deal showed up, so they could move fast when it did.

That distinction matters more than you might think. A power of sale property or a motivated seller does not wait for you to figure out your financing. The deal closes with whoever is ready. Full stop.

So Should You Buy Tomorrow?

Probably not, unless the right deal is in front of you right now. But that is not an argument for sitting still either.

The honest take is this: distressed inventory is building slowly, not all at once. That gives you a window. Not a huge one, and not a predictable one, but a window. The smart move is to use that window to get your house in order (no pun intended) so you are not scrambling when something good surfaces.

Preparation is not passive. It is the actual work.

Talk to a Broker Before You Talk to Anyone Else

This is the part most buyers skip, and it is the part that costs them the most.

The standard sequence people follow goes something like this: browse listings, fall in love with a neighbourhood, book showings, then call a broker in a panic to ask if they can afford it. That sequence is backwards, and it creates real problems.

Understanding what you actually qualify for needs to happen first, before you set foot in a single open house. Not because it is a formality, but because your real number is almost never what you assumed. Sometimes it is higher, which changes what neighbourhoods make sense. Sometimes it is lower, which saves you from six months of looking at the wrong properties. Either way, you need to know before you start, not after you are emotionally invested.

A good mortgage broker does more than pull a pre-approval number out of a calculator. They look at your full picture: your income structure, any existing debt, whether you are salaried or self-employed, whether there are credit issues that need some runway to address, and what lender options actually make sense for your situation. That conversation takes maybe an hour. It saves you months of wasted effort and, in a rising distressed market, potentially tens of thousands of dollars in deals you were not positioned to close.

Calibrate Expectations to Today's Market, Not the One You Remember

Here is another thing brokers hear constantly: buyers who are mentally anchored to 2021 prices.

Real prices have already moved significantly off peak. That cuts both ways. If you are buying, today's market at your budget looks materially different from what it looked like two years ago. Some of that is good news. Some neighbourhoods, some property types, and some price bands now offer genuine value that simply did not exist before. But you have to recalibrate your expectations to what today's market actually offers at your number, not what the headlines say about the broader market or what your colleague paid in 2021.

A broker who is active in the market right now can help you do that recalibration quickly. They see deals across multiple clients, multiple lenders, and multiple price points. That visibility is worth a lot.

Build the Relationships That Give You Access

Properties heading to power of sale and distressed listings do not always hit the public MLS in prime condition. A lot of the best opportunities surface first through agent and broker networks, before they are widely marketed, because the sellers in those situations often want a clean, fast transaction more than they want maximum exposure.

If you want visibility into that inventory, you need to already have relationships with people who are plugged into it. That means a mortgage broker who knows the private lending side of the market, an agent who works distressed files, and a clear sense of what you are looking for so that when someone in that network sees a match, they think of you.

That network does not materialize on the day you decide to buy. It gets built in the weeks and months before.

The Move Right Now Is Preparation

This is not a piece telling you to rush out and buy tomorrow. It is a piece telling you that the buyers who will get the best deals in this cycle, whatever and whenever those deals are, are the ones who started their conversations early.

Talk to your broker now. Get your pre-approval done. Understand your real number. Calibrate what you can actually get for that number in today's market. Build the relationships that give you early visibility into inventory. And then wait for your right deal with your eyes open and your paperwork done.

When a distressed property hits the market at the right price, it is not going to sit there waiting for you to start the process. The buyers who win are already in motion. Be one of them.

If you are a mortgage professional sharing this with clients or your network: the single most valuable thing you can do for someone right now is have that early affordability conversation with them before they start shopping. It changes everything about how they approach the search. And it positions you as the person who helped them get it right from the start, not the one they called in a panic halfway through.

At Stonefield Capital, we have those early conversations every day. If you want to compare notes on what we are seeing in the distressed space, reach out directly at david@stonefieldcapital.ca. I am always happy to talk shop.

From the Desk of Dave