Rylie's Recap - 2020 | Year-in-Review | Business & Personal Life

Well that was an interesting year! 😂

2020 was definitely one full of ups & downs but I have to say that overall I believe it made me stronger.

The year started off on a fantastic note as I got engaged to my fiance on December 31st, 2019 & then we came back to help take care of my granddad who had moved into a new retirement facility just up the street from me.

Everything was going super well but unfortunately his health took a turn for the worst & he passed away on his 91st birthday, March 11th.

On March 12th, the world seemed to explode from COVID19 & everything went into lockdown. Talk about trauma on trauma!

Like many others, the lockdown led me to fret about the future of our society, whether I'd have a job or not + a million other things like how would I get some freaking toilet paper.

It was sad to see so many businesses I care about have to shut down, my jiu jitsu school being one of them.

The only good that came out of this was that it did prompt me to restart my cycling career, this time with road biking!

Starting in August, I set out a challenge to ride from Toronto to Niagara Falls in one day with my best friend & one month later, we had successfully completed the trip in just over 10 hours 😀 (stay tuned for full video of trip coming soon)

This led to me completing just over 3000km in 3 months with 22,000+ metres of elevation climbed & roughly 120 hours of total riding time.

Luckily with the addition of Zwift to my cycling setup, I'm able to ride inside all through the winter to keep my performances improving going into 2021.

On the business side of things, it was a pretty big year as well!

I launched TorontoLuxuryCondosandHomes.com in June and am quite proud to say that it is getting over 20,000 page views per month now 😊

We also launched our #100Trees campaign where we pledged to plant 100 trees for every home that we help buy or sell.

This year we were able to plant 1000 trees & hope to increase this going forward into 2021! 🏡

The Toronto real estate market went absolutely nuts following the initial lockdown earlier this year & we saw explosive demand for homes, specifically semi & detached homes in the areas outside of the Downtown core.

Areas like Richmond Hill, Markham, Durham & Mississauga did extremely well while some neighbourhoods downtown like Queen West actually saw a bit of a dip in demand.

One of the biggest driving forces behind the rampant market this year is actually COVID19 as it drastically changed many buyers search criteria as they were now looking for more space to live/work/exercise/educate from home as was necessary under our new 'normal'.

For these same reasons, we saw much of the condo market suffer as many people were no longer interested in small units under 500 sq. ft, however the part of the condo sector that did perform well was the 2 & 3-bed units which offered more space.

The sector impacted most by COVID19 was without a doubt the condo rentals which saw a nosedive in prices due to a ton of units coming on the market which were previously used for AirBnb.

While it's impossible to predict what will happen in 2021, it is likely we will see more of these market conditions persist as we continue to adapt to our new 'normal' way of living/working/educating/exercising from home.

Have any questions about the real estate market, Zwift setup, cycling or anything else?

Let me know in the comments section below

Happy new year!

Rylie