John Pasalis in Toronto Real Estate News and Condo Buying
Ever since the federal government reduced the maximum amortization on insured mortgages in Canada back in July 2012 we have seen a 17% decline in sales. For home buyers it’s been tough to make sense of what’s really happening in the market because different segments of the market (price range, location, housing type) have been behaving quite differently.
To make things even worse, home buyers have to find some way of separating fact from fiction in the daily news stories they read about Toronto’s housing market.
One news story this week titled “Is Canada’s condo boom coming apart at the seams?” stood out for being very misleading and clearly there to alarm rather than educate readers.
In it the writer highlights “some major flashing red lights” with the condo boom in some of Canada’s largest cities. His key concerns and observations with Toronto’s condo market:
In March, active condo listings for sale on the MLS rose 8 per cent over last year to hit a record high for the month. At the same time, condo sales slumped 18 per cent. Compounding this growing supply-demand imbalance is the 55,000 new condo units currently under construction in the city, the majority of which are set to hit the market through the rest of the year and into 2014.
First of all, suggesting that 55,000 condo units are going to be completed over the next 20 months is nothing more than a bubble theorist’s wishful thinking. Yes, industry data does show that nearly 55,000 condos are scheduled for completion by 2014 and only 5,000 units in 2015 and a mere 1,000 units in 2016. But we all know that a condominium’s scheduled completion date is very different from their actual completion date. I have three clients who just took possession of a condo this month that was scheduled to be completed in 2011. Many of the projects scheduled for completion in 2014 are no doubt going to be delayed and their closings will be pushed out to 2015 and even 2016.
Continue reading "Toronto's Condo Market - Bubble or Balanced?" »








