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: House prices post record rise in May, sales decline continues into June and a troubling downturn is seen
Elsewhere: The lessons from Canada's attempt to curb its house-price boom, where you can live if you earn minimum wage in the United States and the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London
Toronto
Toronto home sales decline continues into June (Toronto Star)
York Region is still showing some of the largest declines of about 60 per cent in some areas, said company president John Pasalis. "The sales numbers keep getting worse,” he said. “It's like they've fallen off a cliff. It's this downward momentum week after week."
Realtor sees 'troubling' downturn in Toronto housing as sales drop 44% (BNN)
Realosophy’s research suggests sales of freehold homes across the Greater Toronto Area are down some 39 per cent so far in June. And for the week ended June 9, sales volumes plummeted 44 per cent compared to the same period in 2016.
House prices post record rise in May as Toronto chill yet ‘to be seen’ (The Globe and Mail)
House prices rose by a record 2.2 per cent across Canada last month compared to April, led by a 3.6-per-cent price increase in Toronto even as total sales fell during the month, Teranet reported Wednesday.
Millennials put housing issues high on political agenda (The Star)
Canada
The lessons from Canada’s attempts to curb its house-price boom (The Economist)
Canada’s housing market thus opens a window on a tragic flaw in the global economy. In only a few decades China has mastered the manufacture of high-quality goods. But it takes far longer to be able to manufacture safe stores of value. Instead, their affluent citizens seek out rich-country assets, including houses. This fundamental mismatch limits the ability of policymakers to stop bubbles from inflating.
Canada's central bank acts to defuse housing market threat (Reuters)
The bank, under pressure to act as home prices soared in Toronto and Vancouver, switched to a hawkish stance this week, just a few months after saying that additional rate cuts were on the table.
Canadian Home Sales See Largest Drop In 5 Years (Canadian Press)
The number of residential properties sold nationwide fell by 6.2 per cent in May compared to April, the largest month-to-month decline in nearly five years, the Canadian Real Estate Association said Thursday. The industry group for real estate agents noted sales were down a whopping 25.3 per cent month-over-month in the GTA.
Among the key questions confronting investigators and government officials: Did a policy of telling people to remain in their apartments until firefighters arrived put residents in danger? What role did exterior cladding, installed as part of a renovation completed last year, play in the rapid spread of the flames? And should older buildings — Grenfell Tower was completed in 1974 — have to be retrofitted with sprinklers and alarm systems?
China’s Real Estate Mirage (NY Times)
