Realosophy Team in Media Roundup, Toronto Real Estate News
All you need to know regarding the housing market in Toronto, Canada and abroad.
This week in Toronto: Ontario Finance Minister might change mind on foreign buyer tax, desperation sets in for house hunters in Toronto, and Toronto passes on Trump Tower.
Elsewhere: Chinese inquiries spike in the rest of Canada following Vancouver foreign buyer tax, NYC to get less federal aid for housing and sales plunge in London thanks to Brexit.
Toronto
Ontario Reconsidering a Foreign Buyer's Tax to Cool Housing Market (Globe and Mail)
Finance Minister Charles Sousa said on Thursday he is looking at the tax as one of a number of options to control aggressive growth in home prices, after rejecting such a measure last year. “A year ago I was thinking, ‘Let market forces prevail,’” Mr. Sousa said. “But now I’m concerned about … the ability of people to enter the marketplace. [There are] bidding wars everywhere you go, it appears, and I’m sensitive to that.”
Desperation Sets in for House Hunters in Toronto’s Red-Hot Market (Bloomberg)
“It’s terrible, it’s just discouraging,” Kayali, 27, said. “You go to the open houses and it’s mostly couples like us. And we’re all in the same boat, looking at one another and I’m thinking ‘O.K. You’re probably outbidding me.’” Just last week they hoped to bid on a semi-detached home similar in size and a five-minute drive away. The next day, it sold for C$1.4 million, 42 percent over asking.
Price of homes sold in GTA last month up 27.7% from year ago (Toronto Star)
Winter hasn’t done anything to cool the region’s blazing real estate market. As the number of home listings continues to flag, re-sale prices soared 27.7 per cent across the Toronto area to $875,983 in February, compared to the same month last year.
Low supply drives February price jump in Toronto real estate market (The Globe and Mail)
No bidders offer to buy Trump-branded tower in Toronto (CBC)
Nobody has stepped up with a bid to buy the Toronto condo and hotel tower bearing Donald Trump's name, which means ownership of the infamous structure will now fall to its largest debt holder.
Canada
Chinese inquiries in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary real estate spiked with Vancouver tax (CBC)
Inquiries from China for property in several big Canadian markets spiked in the months after Vancouver introduced its tax for foreign buyers, according to a report based on data from a top Chinese foreign property website.
Chinese home buyers turn attention away from Vancouver (The Globe)
USA
New York City to Get Less Federal Aid for Housing (New York Times)
Like those 19th-century scrambles, the China “rush” brought sudden prosperity to far-flung places. Townsville, a coastal city in north Queensland, hosted thousands of fly-in-fly-out workers (or “fifos”), who served the Bowen Basin’s coal mines and Mt Isa’s copper and zinc mines. Their six-figure salaries boosted the local economy and inflated the housing market, which attracted speculative investors from faraway Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. “There was so much money around,” says Peter Wheeler, a Townsville estate agent.
