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: What Ontario's foreign home buyer data means, housing market lull expected to linger and how the market 'turned on a dime.'
Elsewhere: Anxiety over the Canadian housing market cuts across class and geography lines, the misguided madness of neighborhood rebranding and Europe's city centres sound the alarm.
Toronto
Toronto’s housing market ‘turned on a dime,’ real estate analyst says (BNN)
“This is just the market unwinding and correcting itself,” said John Pasalis, president at Realosophy Realty, in an interview with BNN. Pasalis said the data, which revealed a 37.3 per cent year-over-year drop in home sales in the Greater Toronto Area for the month of June, isn’t the result of Ontario’s 16-point housing plan introduced in April.
Lull in Toronto-area housing market expected to linger (Toronto Star)
The board issued a revised annual forecast on Thursday along with month-end statistics showing that the average selling price in the Toronto region was 6.3 per cent higher in June year-over-year, even though the market experienced another month-to-month drop.
Three Takeaways from Ontario’s Newly Released Foreign Home Buyer Data (Move Smartly)
While the province’s numbers do not break down the data by region, it’s safe to say that the vast majority of these sales were in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), which includes Toronto and neighbouring York, Peel, Halton and Durham regions, rather than areas further away like Cobourg, Orillia and Brantford.
Foreign buyers make up 4.7% of home sales in Ontario's Golden Horseshoe area (The Globe and Mail)
Nearly 5 per cent of homes sold in the Golden Horseshoe region were purchased by foreign buyers, according to a month’s worth of new data from the Ontario government that reveals the role international investors have played in the area’s overheated real estate market.
Foreign buyer tax impact mostly psychological, says Sousa (Toronto Star)
The province's Fair Housing policy, including its 15 per cent foreign speculation tax, has cooled the Toronto area's overheated housing market, but its impact has been largely psychological, Finance Minister Charles Sousa said Wednesday.
The Quest to Make Vertical Living Family-Friendly (City Lab)
From the 1950s through the ’70s, Toronto built up. High-rises appeared downtown as well as in suburban areas, and a good number of them featured spacious layouts and amenities such as playgrounds to attract and accommodate families.
Canada
Anxiety over Canadian housing costs cuts across class lines and geography: poll (National Post)
A new poll suggests that just over two in five Canadians believe housing in this country is not affordable for them, a finding that cuts almost evenly across income levels.
Vancouver condo prices surge amid apparent thaw in foreign-buyers-tax chill (The Globe)
The benchmark price, which is the industry’s representation of typical homes sold, reached a record $600,700 for condos in the region last month, up 17.6 per cent from June, 2016, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.
How Canada's weak-dollar strategy flopped—and then backfired (Financial Post)
The fact that exports will eventually pick up in response to the lower dollar misses the key point. The lower dollar was meant to be an immediate salve to the wounded Canadian economy in 2015 and 2016. Instead, growth floundered with the Bank of Canada regularly citing weak exports and business investment as the reason growth continued to disappoint in 2015 and 2016, the very sectors the lower dollar was meant to stimulate. Instead of higher exports, easier monetary policy mostly produced soaring house prices in Vancouver and Toronto in 2015 and 2016.
Memories of the past come flooding back as Manuel Mourelo strolls through Barcelona's picturesque Gothic Quarter: children playing, fun with the neighbours, traditional bars... But now, "all of that has disappeared." Hordes of tourists fill the narrow, winding alleys on guided tours, bike and Segway rides, while residents have deserted buildings full of history to make way for quaint hotels and tourist rentals -- an issue that affects popular spots Europe-wide.
