Toronto detached homes might have slipped from highs, but condo apartments pushed higher. Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) number show condo apartment prices reached an all-time in August. Higher condos prices came with inventory and sales that were mostly flat from last year.
Toronto Condos Hit A New All-Time High
The price of a typical condo in Toronto hit a new record. TREB reported a benchmark price of $505,500 in August, up 9.94% from the year before. The City of Toronto condo benchmark reached $533,600, up 11.6% from last year. The gains show an interesting change in the pattern of prices.
Toronto Benchmark Condo Price
The price of a “typical” condo apartment in Toronto.
Source: CREA, Better Dwelling.
The annual gains have increased for the second month in a row. TREB’s 9.94% annual increases is up from the 7.52% it hit two months ago. The City of Toronto’s 11.6% annual gain is up from the 9.1% seen in June. The condo market did not decline on a month over month basis like the detached market.
Toronto Benchmark Condo Price Change
The annual percent change of price, for a “typical” condo apartment in Toronto.
Source: CREA, Better Dwelling.
The median sales price of a condo showed substantial increases. TREB reported a median sale price of $478,889 in August, up 8.83% from last year. The City of Toronto median sale price reached $518,944, up 10.41% from last year. Worth remembering that median sale prices aren’t adjusted for size or quality. That means they aren’t great for determining how much you’ll pay for a home. Instead, they’re helpful for figuring out the direction of dollar flows.
Toronto Median Condo Sale Price
The median sale price of a condo apartment in Toronto.
Source: CREA, Better Dwelling.
The average sale price of a condo is also posting substantial gains. TREB reported an average sale price of $541,106 in August, up 6.4% from last year. The City of Toronto average sale price reached $585,355 in August, up 8.3% from last year. Just like the median, the averages aren’t adjusted for size and quality, so they’re best used for dollar flow.
Toronto Average Condo Sale Price
The average sale price of condo apartments in Toronto, and the suburbs.
Source: CREA, Better Dwelling.
Toronto Condo Sales Are Flat From Last Year
Condo sales are virtually flat across TREB, and lower in the city. TREB reported 2,000 sales in August, up 0.7% from last year. The City of Toronto represented 1,388 of those sales, down 5.6% from last year. The flat movement in sales is actually met with a relatively flat movement in inventory.
Toronto Condo Sales Vs. New Listings
The number of condo sales, vs newly listed condos per month in Toronto.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
Toronto Condo Inventory Is Flat From Last Year
New condo listings made minor gains last year. TREB reported 2,961 sales in August, up 1.61% from last year. The City of Toronto represented 2,013 of the listings, up 1.05% from last year. The slight rise in new listings didn’t translate to more inventory.
The total number of active listings for condos made slight declines. TREB reported 3,592 in August, totally flat from last year. The City of Toronto represented 2,307 of those listings, down 1.95% from last year. TREB’s inventory is about the same as last year, but there’s more inventory in the suburbs this year.
Toronto Active Condo Listings
The number of condo listings available for sale in Toronto.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
Toronto condo prices hit a new all-time high, not following the detached market trend. The most interesting indicator was by far the acceleration of annual price gains. Although two months don’t indicate a new trend, it’s worth seeing how this plays in to the winter months.
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It would be interesting to see the trailing 6 month demo mix of buyers. I have my theories. To infinity and beyond. BD4L.
BULL TRAP crap
We will have the early stages cultural/demo shift happening which will/should skew a lot of numbers as events like these are cyclical and in the case of boomer wealth transfer, has never happened in this scale. There are RE buyers who purchased in ‘nowhere land’ (ya know, Mississauga) 40 for $50K and now sitting on 10-30x times in equity. They can buy and sell whatever they want and I know a number if boomers who view Toronto as the place they want to be for a litany of reasons (public transit, culture, entertainment, hospital, services). They are the new ‘foreign buyer’ who is less concerned about a long term household formation but more ‘I wants what I wants’. Also, if the understanding is ‘prices always go up’ some boomers may be viewing TO condos as an investment for their family. Interesting. Tick tock. BD4L.
A lot of agents actually pitch condos to Boomers as “dividend” income for rent. It’s unclear how they’re convincing them to do negative carry, and consider it dividend income though.
I know at least three out of town middle class families who have recently bought tiny condos for their kids to live in while pursuing higher education in Toronto. I also hear it come up at social events in Toronto and Montreal. Its also a thing these days.
Sorry, gotta rant: I love it how the boomers who basically don’t manage their own money in any capacity , even just to see what happens and understand the stock market, are now ‘savvy’ investors who dump hundreds of thousands into R plus take on leverage!. RE is the most expensive stock in the world! Look at 25-45 years olds and a lot dabble on their own outside of their portfolio (with many getting better gains…lol) but you ask a 65 year old sitting on tons of cash whether they would invest $10-25K on their own and they look at you like you’re crazy and making money in the market is ‘like a casino’ but the same person suddenly buys a condo with leverage, without selling their primary residence because it can only go up in value, and seems to ‘understand their investment’…sweet lord. Tick tock. BD4L.
Just want to point out that if you listen to bears, you would be paying $70k more this year than last year.
Just want to point out that if instead of buying more overvalued real estate, if you would have went into a basket of tech stocks, some safe S&P ETF, and speculative MJ stocks, you literally did 2000-3000% in the ten years that real estate doubled.
It’s funny how the strongest argument many TO RE bulls have is “bah — bears have been saying that for years”. That and “I bought for X and sold for Y baby, bought for X and sold for Y.”
Well, isn’t it the strongest argument? You are paying more today than then…a simple statement that irrefutably proves how wrong TO RE bears are in waiting for a crash since 2014.
In 2014, when prices were about 5% higher than they were in 1990? There’s s reason the real estate board’s data starts in 1996.
@Joe “You guys have been saying that for years” is a long, long way from the strongest argument bulls have. It’s an extremely simplistic viewpoint that makes every bull feel smug. The exact same argument was used by pets.com bulls.
I have friends who have purchased fire and flood insurance every year for decades. Never cashed in. Morons.
toronto.listing.ca shows the average condos prices for the last 6 months as 517K (March), 530, 535, 535, 525, 520 (August). Yes, 6 month average is at all time high, but the price is going down.
Prices speak volumes! Though you are right that bear comments here do more in-depth analysis and show more knowledge, they are not necessarily right in their analysis all the time whereas if you look at hard numbers like prices, it’s a statement that is definitely true…you do have to pay more for RE now that then and that is undeniable.
So the question is where is the crash? If a 30% crash happens after a 100% increase in prices…it’s only a crash to those who bought in late. I haven’t been here long enough to know when the bears started predicting the crashes but if they started in 2014 then even with the dip in prices last year, it still shows how wrong they are in their predictions.
Maybe bears will keep saying the market will crash until one day it really happened…maybe 10 years after they started predicting the crash…lol
Yes – reading Garth Turner kept me and my wife from buying a condo in Toronto in 2009 for $250,000. Now that we have two kids and are STILL renting a 2-bedroom apartment – it would be nice to take the tidy profit of our condo more than doubling and have a large down payment on a house seeing as we are out of room. We have saved diligently and invested in a balanced portfolio and have built up roughly $180,000 – which gets us nowhere in Toronto. We are simply going to have to move cities if we want a home. I agree with all the bears – I agree that the numbers are ludicrous, but I can wait no more in this tiny place. I have been holding out for 9 years, but my family has grown. Whaddya gonna do. Sometimes being sensible bites you.
The problem is Garth’s narrative didn’t make sense in 2009. Toronto didn’t recover from the 1990 peak in real terms until ~2012. That 30% growth, just like when we saw it in 1989-1990, is actually pricing in forward value of decades.
Don’t believe anecdotal sources, look at the data and come to your own conclusions.
But compared to the freehold homes in the 905 area, the condos downtown are still relatively affordable.
This was sold last week,
Unit 1408, 210 Simcoe St, Toronto
SOLD for $0.69M, 9/11/2018 116.5% of asking price
https://mongohouse.com/soldrecords/5b9b3cac4df2c467e230133f
And this one on St. Patrick
Unit 308, 96 St. Patrick St, Toronto
SOLD for $0.77M, 9/12/2018 100.3% of asking price
https://mongohouse.com/soldrecords/5b9c8e8a4df2c4d4ee36db41
Doh…don’t quote specific sales or even regional data…a bear will come along and give you another example and call you cherry picking! Then he will search through a ton of data and give you one example that showed how a unit has sold for much less! But this would be tough since you quoted condos! 😀
You’re right, it would be tough to find a condo example right now (unless we were looking at Vancouver, Seattle, London, New York, Sidney, etc). But what if he had quoted detached home prices? Would be extremely easy to find multiple examples around the GTA no?
Based on prices today, those that listened to bears that were considering buying a condo (No land, and we have oodles or room to build new supply) would not be happy right now. However, those that started listening to bears this time in 2016 and were considering buying a house (something with land, and where there is a real limit on how much can be built) are very happy right now.
How long can this trend continue? Do condos pass SFH in price? Do condos have to drop? Do houses start to take off again? Or do we just have a “flat market” for the next decade until wages catch up.
*wink* BD4L.
Grizzly Gus said:
“How long can this trend continue? Do condos pass SFH in price? Do condos have to drop? Do houses start to take off again? Or do we just have a “flat market” for the next decade until wages catch up.”
To answer one of those questions: houses do seem to be starting to take off again. Condo equity is moving into the freehold market. It’s happening right now since Labour Day, but there isn’t enough data to show a trend, but when a house that the last year of data would indicate a sub-$1MM sale goes for $1.12MM with 11 offers on it, that tells me the market has definitely strengthened.
It may be a product of a return to confidence. It could be the lack of quality inventory this past summer. Likely a combination of both, IMO. I have yet to hear anyone complain about the current interest rate environment, so that has yet to have an impact even after the BoC increases.
I personally believe that trading condo for freehold is the smart play in Toronto (talking 416) right now. I put my money where my mouth is and bought a home and prepping the condo for sale. I wish I could keep the condo, too, because the larger suites in the downtown condo market still has more growth ahead of it.
Joe.. The market IS correcting whether you like it or not. You’re the guy that originally cherry picked and tried to make it seem that momentum is making it’s way back into sales and prices for single family..
How does this Bull below feel these days??
You want more? I’ll flood DB with an ever growing list
278 Dunview Ave. Toronto
Bought 3/2017 – $3.38
SOLD 7/2018 – $2.39
MIC DROP
Great example. Of note, it is the ‘investors’ who drive the market down because, similar to any portfolio, you can be up on X but down on Y. If Y is bleeding cash and killing your return you can sit and hope or sell and REALIZE THE GAINS. I know an Aussie who came here and made boatloads in RE, he wants to cash out and head home and will take a ‘loss’…which really means cementing gains. See what is happening? RE is getting blurry. What is an investment to some is a home to others and those who thought they were buying a home are now evaluating RE like an investment (what is my breakeven, ROI, blah, blah,blah)…be humble, make sound decisions in all aspects of life which you can live with, love life and those around you, don’t get sucked into FOMO, everything comes out in the wash. BD4L.
@Enough of this – Yes, I ‘cherry picked’ examples and that was a mistake that I have made. I should have been more general…I do think the market momentum for SFH is picking up since Labor Day but I guess we will have to wait a couple of weeks and see what September numbers look like. I am speaking for 416 which I track closely but not 905…
How about you find me a 416 house that was bought in 2014 and earlier and still loss money…heck…find me one that loss money since June 2016…obviously if you bought at the peak in 2017, there are so many that lost money but bears didn’t start predicting the crash since 2017…they started way before that and from one other person who commented, it seems like they started predicting the crash since 2014…so yeah, I really doubt you can find me an example. Even if you did, it’s probably one in thousands and you must have won the lottery to be that one.
Exactly. Look at overall market numbers, like those mentioned in this article!
Why can’t the bears just admit that the market isn’t tanking like they say? How difficult is it?
Bears are never wrong SCE…or will never admit it…they will keep waiting for the next ‘crash’!
905 region was bound to have a big correction with Chinese getting hit by tariffs, foreign buyer tax, etc and they use don’t have that many pull factors that the 416 region have. Every investor in RE knows that 905 will always be more volatile than 416 and it was a risk that they took.
Then buy? Not sure what all the bulls are looking for. Can’t refute the data. Bears are always predicting a crash but a broken clock is still right twice a day so a ‘crash’ could be tomorrow, 10 years or never. Nothing has changed in the last 12 months and there are ZERO ways to predict the future. Condos printing new highs is clearly an indication of stability within the market and with limited/no downside factors emerging in the next 6-24 months. Clearly out of the trough and now in recovery. This will eventually feedback into SFH as it is always the most prized asset, ask Jack Ma, so by this logic, condos are the dumb money. Jump the chain and get into SFH immediately. You’re a sucker if you do not and the hope of home ownership is slipping through your fingers. Why are you waiting? You will either saddle yourself with two lifetimes of debt or never have a place to raise your family, living in your parent’s house forever. Put on your adult pants and stop looking for BD to tell you what to do; spin the wheel of life people and deal with the consequences. Good luck everyone! BD4L.
People have been buying, that’s why prices are going up. They are following your suggestion and making money out of it. Meanwhile you sold your place at lower levels two years ago and probably will never be able to get back in the market.
Hyman Minsky – Stability breads instability.
When people see something has been a good and stable investment in the recent pass, they pile on driving prices higher, once pricing appreciation starts to accelerate, more and more people pile on, rinse wash repeat. Eventually instability is born because prices have reached a point that far surpass any rational justification.
Warren Buffet recently had a great explanation for why bubbles occur and will continue to do so.
“People start being interested in something because it’s going up, not because they understand it or anything else. But the guy next door, who they know is dumber than they are, is getting rich and they aren’t,” he said. “And their spouse is saying can’t you figure it out, too? It is so contagious. So that’s a permanent part of the system.”
So has the price growth in an area like the GTA been a result of fundamentals or of human psychology? BD has covered the “ponzi buyer stage” I believe. Are we now at a point where people are buying homes they cannot afford because they believe prices will only go up and worse case they will just have to sell for a profit”?
“I bought for x and its now worth 200k more!” or ” Jimmy bought for x and could now sell for 200k more. We should get on the action too!”
In reality, when the next “investor” buys, they have allowed Jimmy (or someone like Jimmy) to cash out and lock in that 200k gain (Way to go Jimmy!) . Is that next buyer only jumping on the bandwagon because they believe they will be able to cash out in a few years for a 200k profit too, or is there another strategy at play. Considering that any investor buying for a reasonable down payment today would be cash flow negative, I believe it really is just an appreciation play. Sally who just helped Jimmy cash in for 200k is hopping that Timmy will be there to cash out her profits. Maybe he will be, but what happens if he is not?
There is perhaps one true fundamental that can help justify the crazy price appreciation we have had on top of the human psychology side . That is interest rates. Fraser institute did a study looking at the impact falling interest rates have had on borrowing power. An average Canadian household earning the exact same annual income in 2016 vs 2000 would have been able to borrow 53% more – 181K vs 277k – just because interest rates fell from an average of 7% to 2.7% over this time.
When they factored in the average income gain between 2000-2014, they found that total borrowing power had actually grown by 126%. 181k vs 409K. What has been the total appreciation in the GTA over the time?
Slapping 20% down and then borrowing 409K equals about what? 511k? What is the average price of a 1 bdrm condo in the GTA today? Sure Toronto wages are higher on average than all of Canada but, not sure how much more we can grow from here.
To recap on how I see the market, lowering interest rates over the past 20 years have increased every level of buyers total borrowing power. FOMO and keeping up with Jimmy, has driven certain canadians to max out their borrowing capacity to the point where the lowest possible entry point into the market (1 bdr condos) now equal the average max borrowing capacity.
Because RE prices are dependent on financing. Prices are not determined by what someone is willing to pay. They are determined by what someone is willing and able to borrow.
So the big question to me, is where are we in the credit cycle? More rate hikes anyone?
**clap from the back of the room** So bulls, are you jimmy or sally? Think about it…here’s the rub…it’s a trick question. In many cases they are the same; Jimmy just has more access to capital which is coming from retirement/friends/inheritance/sound business decisions/success/etc.. Jimmy thinks he’s a genius and so does everyone around him so he ‘bails out’ Uncle Tony to ‘move up the chain’. Why wouldn’t you? 10% on $3M is a lot more in $ terms than 10% on $1M, and it is so quick and easy. Tony decides he wants to retire in Florida and made a hella lot of cash so exits….tony is gone with his riches. Jimmy needs to find someone to bail him out and so does Sally as they can’t afford the debt after small increases (hint: adding a 1.25 points from historic lows is a small increase in the grand scheme of things!). The only ones who make money in an asset bubble are those who sell; anyone can be rich on paper (in fact, history has shown us there are many people like this). We are greedy, greedy apes; no more and no less. BD4L.
I’ve been visiting this site since about April of this year. I wosh I had started earlier. In general, I think there’s a ton of truth to all sides in the bear versus bull argument. I don’t intend to give my opinion as it really doesn’t matter. It’s not the educated kind. I just wanted to point out an article I read today. On a mainstream media source. It talked about an economist stating that we’ve officially entered a recession. If that’s the case, things should start getting clear in a hurry.
The stats speak for themselves however not all GTA condos are strong.
Some of those are selling barely above 2011 price levels, like this one:
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-condo-for-sale/markham-york-region/1-bedroom-den-15th-floor-95-sqft-balcony/1384496303?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true
Another major warning for Canadian RE for those who care.
“Canada’s Housing Market Ranked 3rd-Riskiest In World”
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/09/15/riskiest-housing-markets-canada_a_23528163/
Hey Blue Bear tic – toc? You guys never give up eh? As I wrote here before I agree that 20 percent increase is not sustainable, but houses and condos in good areas close to Subway and jobs will still go up specially in the Toronto core. Yes it will be modest 3-7 percent increase but still it will go up. I am happy so far with my 2 condo investments in Downtown Toronto in 2015 and in 2017. Both projects 10 minutes walk to financial district. Blue Bear tell me when this condos will go back to initial $400K price points (2 bedroom units)? I will hold my breath… And again if you look at prices in some big European and US cities and taking in consideration how Canadian dollar cheap now I wouldn’t be surprised if we see soon 1200 – 1700 dollars per square foot in good locations in Downtown Toronto area. Oh by the way : Microsoft and Google coming to Downtown Toronto soon. They will bring thousands of high paying jobs. What do you think will happen to condo prices in Downtown? Again don’t get me wrong the prices already elevated high enough that I don’t see aggressive price growth. May be for investment point of view there are better options from cash point of view available now ( like my third condo purchased 8 month ago in Downtown Kitchener) but again : prices in Downtown Toronto area will continue to raise, but slower. Good luck to everyone.
First, I will say at least you put your money where your mouth is.
My first question – which EU and US cities are we comparing to? London, NY, Seatle, California markets all look like they are starting to correct. Both from a buying price and rental price perspective. Those cities also have way higher average wages. Google and Microsoft like us for two big reasons, 1) because we have a lot of talent and we are willing to do the same job for less. 2) the US getting rid of its skilled immigrant program. If auto’s get wacked by Trump will they create enough jobs to offset this?
My next question would be which currency are we comparing CAD to? Yes we have had a drop relative to USD (which i do expect will drop further) , but virtually every other currency in the world has dropped by an equal or greater amount relative to USD. Are we about to have a flood of rich Americans buying up all of our property?
My third question to you would be what is the cash flow situation on your properties? (accounting for debt servicing, maintenance and tax). Were any of those projects precon? and if so how many of them have actually been completed. I would assume you are cash flow positive on the 2015 purchase. 2017 you should be if purchased at the start of the year. I have no idea what rents are like in KW, although it is a city I could see myself moving to one day.
Last, do raising interest rates worry you at all? How high do you think they will go?
In regards to when do I think we will see prices collapse. I think it will be sometime over the next year or two as the record volume of supply starts to hit the market. Over 50% of these were sold to “investors” most of who will be cash flow negative (assuming a normal down payment). Even with 3-7% annual price appreciation, I think most of them would eventually be spooked into selling because many would STILL be in the red once you account for inflation. 3% inflation wipes out a 3% gain. If they have a mortgage then you can deduct the interest expenses from the gains as well. They are losing even more money once you account for the negative cash flow. When some of these genius realize this truth they will rush to sell to find that the buyer pool has been cut by more than half because their genius investor peers have stopped buying. If rates continue to increase higher expect the buyer pool to shrink even further.
Correction – Inflation and how cash flow negative you are should be deducted from your predicted 3-7% gain. The interest your are paying on your financing fits into the cash flow side.
Oh ketchup….you sadly miss the point. Go leverage up and purchase as much as possible. Come back in 12 months and we’ll see where you are. Funny how the same SFH bulls are now condo bulls spouting the same thing. Hopefully hamster pants take off so you plot some money into my main gig. ‘Buy’ muffin…see what I did there? Double entendre…whatever…BD4L.
Hiding behind your prediction later in the future again? Typical bear argument, always projecting things in the future and when it finally realizes they chirp on about how they everyone so. Yes, thanks. Meanwhile, prices have doubled, tripled since. Sorry, but a small pullback from a massive rally doesn’t make you right.
None of the bulls here have ever said that Toronto real estate will keep making 30% YoY gains. NO ONE. What the bulls did agree on was that it’s stabilized and overall, should be growing. It’s the bears here keep chirping on about massive crashes, worst mistakes, financial ruin. That has only happened to a very very very small % of the population who decided to buy after a +30% YoY move. It’s unfortunate for them, but how many people does that total?
I just don’t understand why you bears dont’ accept when it’s sitting right under your noses?????!?!?!? Boggles my mind.
@SCE “None of the bulls here have ever said that Toronto real estate will keep making 30% YoY gains. NO ONE. ”
Perhaps. But there are a number who think 30% YOY in good years, 7-8% in bad. And boatloads who think it’s upwards forever.
“I just don’t understand why you bears dont’ accept when it’s sitting right under your noses?????!?!?!? Boggles my mind.”
Accept what?
This boggles *my* mind:
“Typical bear argument, always projecting things in the future…”
Should we be bearish about the past decade in TO RE instead?
Show me who thinks real estate will keep going up 30% YoY. Just one person.. please show me.
Accept that the bear argument is wrong (I will accept that it’s wrong NOW.. may not temporarily be in the future), but over the longer term, it’s absolutely WRONG.
I will also add, if it does retrace a bit in the future (which likely it will), over the longer term, that’s just a drop in the bucket. The bears here chirp all day long about how anyone buying now is an idiot and faces financial ruin, blah blah. Please, why don’t you guys accept what’s actually happening. Do the bears really think housing is going to tank to 2014 levels? That’s what boggles my mind
I have a better question for you SCE. Show me any widely held asset whose charts turns parabolic as housing did starting in 2016 that doesn’t have a significant correction afterwards. Not a crash necessary but a protracted downturn. To say it will just stay flator go sideways never happens. This was a credit expansion event. Credit is now contracting. The math is simple. A recession in the next 18-24 months is inevitable.
As I said, people buying up 30% YoY… that’s a small subset of the population. I agree, that’s just plain stupid. There has been a correction.. since May 2017. Now prices have stabilized and are upticking.
As for recession in 18 to 24 months, let’s see about that. I mean I can take your word for it, or I can take the word of all the companies who are starting up shop in Toronto.
I think prices will go back to 2014 levels. All we would need is for interest rates to go back to historical norms. Believe this for a lot of the reasons sited above in the post where I quote the Fraser institute study. If we get a bad recession along with this it could get a lot worse.
The only thing that will get me to change my stance is if the debt situation can be figured out. Only real way this works is if we some how get sustained wage inflation which outpaces inflation and rate hikes for a sustained period.
“Show me who thinks real estate will keep going up 30% YoY. Just one person.. please show me.”
I didn’t claim there was anybody who said that. So you might as well say “show me 1 person who thinks real estate will keep going up 394712894% YOY. Just one person..please show me.”
You have no idea whether things have stabilized long term yet. Short term it looks like things have stabilized, sure, but doesn’t mean anything. The trend line has been broken. Credit is contracting. Housing needs credit to expand. That’s how leverage works and homes are bought on leverage of borrowed dollars not cash.
What companies setting up in Toronto? Ontario in general isn’t a great place to set up any business. They have been flat out hostile to entrepreneurs and small businesses. Doug Ford could change that down the road but this is a Canadian economy comment so why talk about just Toronto?
Interest rates always rise into a recession. Credit cycles end with interest rates rising and the contraction of credit. It’s how excesses get purged and another credit cycle can begin and incomes can play catch up. Recessions are inherently bad if they are short and not deep. This one will be because we let this credit cycle go for too long to avoid the recession we should have had in 2008-09. Pay now. Pay later.
*Recessions aren’t inherently bad if they are short and not deep.
http://blog.padmapper.com/canadian-rent-trends
oh. September rents are out:
“Toronto, ON remained the most expensive rental market in the nation with one bedroom rent growing 2.8% to $2,200, while two bedrooms stayed fairly stable at $2,820. Notably, two bedroom rent here is up 15.6% since this time last year.”
What do the bears think of that?
I think that last year vancouver was number 1 because of “foreign demand, land shortage (mountains and oceans), and world class city”…………… Now prices are down.
Grizzly Guz – I am not planning to defend my investments. You do the math yourself – for you and other bears. I gave you all the variables you need : 400 K 2 bedroom condo, 80K deposit. Brand new 2 bedroom condo near financial district will cost around $2700 or so rent, right? You calculate and tell all the bears how much positive cash flow I will have. Oh and by the way don’t tell me you don’t know that almost every condo in good location in Downtown Toronto is multiple offers. And even for rent – there are 10 and more offers for every unit – just to rent it! Many of them actually offering higher rent amount then landlord asked.
Not sure why people need to devolve this into Bear and Bull camps. It’s always about taking advantage of opportunities that present itself in a prudent way. Bulls and Bears get fed and Pigs get slaughtered.
I said it would pull back once all the record supply hits the market. Want to back up any of the points from my last point. Which european/US cities are we comparing too (Which are not correcting themselves). Which currency other than USD can look at CAD as a discount right now?
This blog was pretty quiet recently but now we have a single article with some positive spin and all bulls are here.
Do you guys understand that this is the only positive sector across the whole GTA and GV markets?
-Vancouver market is declining in all segments including condos (both sales & prices)
-Pre-construction markets are nearly dead in GTA and GV. Sales for new constructions in GTA are 55% below 10y average and discounts/incentives are being offered for many projects.
– Generally all pre-construction detached buyers in GTA and GV are now underwater even struggling to close.
– Detached market in GTA is in free fall pretty much everywhere around Toronto with typical inventories 8-12 months
– GTA sales are below 10y average.
– Affordability is getting even worse after rates started to go up (means market is becoming more overvalued)
Most buyers are now concentrated in resale condo sector and yes, it’s pretty strong in GTA so far, but that’s the last piece of both GTA and GV real estate markets which is temporary holding up.
Couple of years ago we had “everything is strong in Toronto and Vancouver” markets, now it’s “only resale condos are strong in Toronto” markets and you call it a bull case? Good luck.
Single article??? For real?
You do realize that this site is the most bias site out there? This site tries to paint a bleak picture and brushes off positive data as one offs. I don’t expect to see much positive articles from this site. However, the data don’t lie and BD has to acknowledge it. This place reminds me of Infowars – Alex Jones and all the bears here are just his loyal followers.
So why are you here everyday? Worried about your investments?
Because this site and all the bears are a joke. Provides me with comical relief for 15 mins when I’m on the can.
Me thinks you worried!
I don’t understand why we’re still arguing about this. Yes you bought a few years ago and now you’re a paper millionaire good for you! It’s now 2018, I don’t give an F if you bought before, what bears are saying is that it’s stupid to buy now; which if you don’t agree with that than you’re a bigger sucker than I thought. Stop living in the past! Bears are looking to the future, and in that future it looks as though we’ll be right very soon.
If you think buying now is such a smart idea why not get your butt out there and buy since we’re all idiots? Instead of sitting at your computer trying to tell everyone what a genius you are that you own property. If you own property and are happy, go enjoy your life! The rest of us bears are waiting for the right opportunity which today and for the next year it is not.
In reality, if you’re reading these blogs every day I assume you’re trying to convince us bears to buy to spur more FOMO. Not gonna work, if we didn’t buy in 2017 we sure as heck ain’t gonna buy now so go ahead and spend your millions of dollars… oh wait you actually haven’t realized those gains silly me!
In the macro sense, there’s never a bad time to buy real estate – just use dollar-cost averaging and don’t throw all your life savings into it in one fell swoop. Invest a fraction of your RE capital every year for X years and usually corrections don’t matter. The higher that X is, the lower the risk. The # of bull market years outweigh # of bear market years so you’ll be fine.
Also, interest risk is misinterpreted as a negative. High interest mean there is currently high inflation and a hot economy which props up wages and rents. When things in the economy go south, rates adjust down but rents are sticky, so you effectively win in both good and bad markets.
Even today, you CAN find cash-flow positive properties. Not every property is a downtown Toronto condo. Other desirable parts of Toronto, and Ontario, can provide positive cash flow if you look hard enough. It’s not easy anymore, but it’s possible. How? Google. Read, read, and then read some more. Read the bulls, read the bears, read the RE agent blogs, and read the doomsdayers like Garth, Zerohedge, and, yes, BD. Make up your own minds. There’s some guidelines you can listen to but they’re not hard-and-fast rules. Run the numbers, learn Excel, be ridiculously meticulous about the finances and risk behind opportunities. My RE guy hate me because I reject 99% of what he shows me. But that other 1%.. that’s where opportunity lies. In a bull market, you can throw a dart at a board and make money. In other times, like today – if you want to reduce risk, you’ve got to do the work.