Toronto Real Estate and Neighbourhoods Blog | Move Smartly

5 Questions for...a Frustrated Home Buyer Blogger (FML Listings)

Urmi Desai in 5 Questions, Home Buying

The blogosphere has been abuzz about “FML Listings” an anonymous blog launched by a frustrated Toronto home buyer. FML’s MO is as simple as it is addictive: post a not-so-hot house with a whopping price tag listed on realtor.ca and add raw commentary. See for example, this post about a $739,000 house at Jane and Finch:

Does this mean that not only can I not afford to live where I want in North York because of the million dollar bungalows, and I for sure can’t live in my first choice of mid-town, I can barely live in Leslieville because of crazy bidding wars, but now I can’t even buy a reasonably priced home at JANE AND FINCH?!?!  Is this what it feels like to hit bottom?

It’s like the Globe and Mail’s celebrity caption guy for houses. It’s also a tonic for those tired of hearing (and experiencing) that a house is worth what the market (i.e., the next buyer) decides it is.

FML and spouse own a home in Richmond Hill, but after being underwhelmed by suburban life, decided to move to Toronto to be closer to family, friends and work. That was three years ago. The search continues.

***

Urmi Desai: Why did you start blogging about the real estate situation in Toronto?

FML Listings: After seeing so many ridiculous listings, I started to think maybe I was the only one who was wrongly thinking they were insanely overpriced. But then I saw one that just put me over the edge. I posted it to Facebook, and I got a lot of feedback that I didn't expect. Firstly, it made me realize that it wasn't just me who thinks that a million dollar bungalow is out of whack, but more importantly that not many people were actually aware of the situation that was going on with some of the listings around the city. I started finding more and more of these listings, each one worse than the next, which drove me to start the blog so I could show at least a few other people what was really going on in this city. It's really disheartening to go into an open house priced at $600,000 that you know is worth $400,000 and you're sure it's not going to sell, but then the open house is packed with people and it ends up turning into a bidding war situation. So to be able to have this outlet where I see feedback from people actually agreeing that it is ridiculous, it has validated the years that I've spent watching the market, being stressed out, wondering "who's buying these?!”

UD: What do you think is driving the house feeding frenzy in Yonge St. neighbourhoods in North Toronto?

Five Questions for...Architect Kevin Weiss on Shaping Toronto's Streets

Urmi Desai in 5 Questions

Editor's Note: In our "Five Questions" series, Move Smartly bloggers get answers to the questions we'd all like to ask about Toronto real estate.

Russett Avenue, Larkin Architect Limited, Photos: Shai Gil

Toronto architect Kevin Weiss, principal at Larkin Architect Limited, has been busy. After a fire destroyed a row of historic houses in Toronto's west-end Wallace Emerson neighbourhood, several owners contacted Weiss to help them rebuild. Linear and modern, his creations complicate the Victorian streets of Toronto.

I asked Kevin Five Questions about the working life of someone who shapes Toronto:

Urmi Desai: Why were you approached by several home owners on Franklin Avenue (Wallace Emerson) to design their houses? What made them chose you in particular?

Kevin Weiss: A couple of years ago a really terrible fire occurred which destroyed six row houses on the street.

The artist Sylvie Bélanger, who shows at the Birch Libralato Gallery and is the owner of the corner lot, was referred to me. So, it was Sylvie and her husband, Rick, that hired me first to design a new detached house on their wide lot (the source of the fire had been the neighbouring attached house). I designed a house suited for a very unique site – on a corner and across the from a beautiful treed city park – for a very unique and design-engaged couple. My firm holds centre to its belief that good clients are needed for good architecture.

As the post-fire houses were all left standing – albeit destroyed – with the six different owners in difficult negotiations with various insurance adjusters, only Sylvie and Rick had begun to prepare plans for their rebuild. Given that the house remnants were all attached together, we could not start construction until all the houses had been demolished. And in the City of Toronto, you can't demolish until you get a building permit. But the condition of the burnt-out houses was creating a hazardous situation in that a strong wind could easily cause the unsupported walls to collapse. We wrote a letter to the City stating that since demolition permits were being denied, the City would be responsible should anything happen. The City granted a permit within two days.  

In the meantime, to try to get the neighbours moving along in their rebuilding process, Sylvie and Rick asked me to speak to them. I suggested that unless they worked collectively – with coordinated building plans and with one contractor – the building costs and schedule would significantly increase. The group asked me for a fee proposal. I was somewhat hesitant as the five other house owners were a widely varied group including an elderly Portuguese couple, a talented young chef Cordon Bleu in France, a highly opinionated Denturist who was acting on behalf of his mother, the TD Bank who before the fire had foreclosed on one of the houses, and finally, a very nice couple who unfortunately were in the midst of a divorce. In the end, we ended doing Sylvie’s house and three of the remaining five.

Urmi: One of the criticisms of your work on Franklin Avenue, we'll call it the "Crystal critique" (in honour of the modern update to the traditional ROM facade), is that it breaks up the orderly line up of heritage houses that Toronto is known for, and irrevocably ends a legacy that collectively belongs to us. How do you respond to this?

Five Questions for...The Globe and Mail's John Daly on Toronto's Condo Love

Urmi Desai in Five Questions, Toronto Real Estate News, Condo Buying

Editor's Note: In our "Five Questions" series, Move Smartly bloggers get answers to the questions we'd all like to ask about Toronto real estate news.

John Daly has written an engaging piece on Toronto's seemingly insatiable appetite for condos in this month's Report on Business Magazine. You can find the current ROB magazine on newsstands or read the article online (read here). 

I invited John to answer five questions about his article and Toronto's condo scene in general:

Urmi Desai: There is increasing concern that new condos no longer make for good investments as the average price per square foot for pre-construction condos is approaching or even exceeding that of comparable resale condos. Have you seen any sign of “condo love” slowing down in Toronto?

John Daly: Condo love still appears to be very strong. There are a lot of great big holes in the ground and construction cranes going up downtown. Just near The Globe and Mail, Trump’s tower is near its full height, Shangri-La is rising, and several towers are underway in the massive Concord CityPlace project. And the names are getting even more imaginative. Shangri-La calls its apartments “private estates.” At CityPlace, you can buy into buildings called Quartz, Panorama and Parade.

Five Questions For....Pascal Gauthier, TD Bank Senior Economist on the Real Estate Market in Canada and Toronto

John Pasalis in Five Questions, Toronto Real Estate News, Mortgages and Finance

Editor's Note: "Five Questions For" is a periodic series in which Move Smartly bloggers get answers to the questions we'd all like to ask about real estate.

TD Economics made headlines a few weeks ago when they released a report forecasting a 10% decline in Canadian home prices.  

I invited TD Bank Senior Economist Pascal Gauthier to answer five questions about the report they recently published and about Toronto's real estate market overall:

John Pasalis: Hi Pascal, thank you for taking some time to answer a few questions about the recent TD Economics report on Canada's real estate market.  Your colleague Grant Bishop calls for a roughly 10% decline in average home prices in Canada.  When do you see this happening?  Do you expect a quick decline in prices or is this going to carry into 2011?

Pascal Gauthier, TD Economics: The -10% mentioned by my colleague Grant is a peak-to-trough figure, rather than an annual average. Some of that adjustment is already under way on a (seasonally-adjusted) month-to-month basis, with average prices down about 3.5% since May. We think we are roughly a third of the way through the price adjustment, implying roughly another 9 months of trend decline – bottoming sometime in the first half of next year, likely Q2 on a quarterly basis.

John Pasalis: In May 2010, TD Economics released a report forecasting a roughly 5% total decline in home prices by the end of 2011.  What economic factors have changed over the past three months to account for the significant change in TD's forecast?

Pascal Gauthier: The May report referred to a -2.7% annual average national price change in 2011. As of August, this had been revised down slightly to -3.0% (see our latest housing tables, page 2)

John Pasalis: The strong recovery in the housing market in 2009 caught virtually everyone by surprise. What impact, if any, do you feel behavioral variables such as consumer perceptions and confidence have on the real estate market and how do you as an economist account for such variables?