Costing Toronto's Bubble + Slower March Home Starts

Toronto's 2017 housing bubble hurt consumers and worsened affordability, with some areas affected far more significantly than others.

Elsewhere: Canadian housing starts slowed in March, can New York City save it's public housing and housing incentives fail to ease Sydney's affordability crisis.

Toronto

Toronto’s housing bubble cost sellers $136 million: Report (Toronto Star)

John Pasalis, president of Toronto’s Realosophy brokerage, manually tracked 866 home listings (excluding condos) that sold in the Toronto area in 2017 and then appeared back on the market by the same seller by the first quarter of this year.

How speculators inflated the Toronto housing bubble (Macleans)

Toronto brokerage Realosophy Realty Inc. found 16.5 per cent of low-rise houses in the Greater Toronto Area were purchased by investors during the first quarter of 2017, the peak of the bubble. In 2012, investors accounted for only 4.8 per cent of low-rise purchases.

What it was like to get caught in Toronto's swift and brutal housing plunge (Financial Post)

“The condo segment is probably the one thing that’s potentially going to cause some vulnerability in the market in Toronto,” Pasalis said. “But everyone’s been calling for a condo crash in Toronto for 10 years — it’s hard to predict.”

Twitter critics highlight casualties of Toronto’s slow real estate market (The Globe and Mail)

“This is cherry picking the extremes,” says John Pasalis, president of Realosophy Real Estate Inc., who expects to see fewer of these examples crop up the further we get away from the period of peak price drops that happened in the summer of 2017. “The floor fell out in a number of weeks ... at this point it’s a history lesson because prices have been pretty stable lately.”

Why a growing city like Toronto needs housing, infrastructure (The Star)

Infrastructure is the foundation on which the success of a city is built. And any resident of the GTA, and anybody in the market for a new home, should care about infrastructure. We take it for granted when it is there, but we really feel the pinch when it is not.

Canada

Canadian housing starts slowed in March, CMHC reports (Canadian Press)

The pace of housing starts slowed in March as the rate of new work on buildings such as apartments, townhouses and condominiums decreased, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said Tuesday.

Property heading for a crash? 7 reasons why it's hard to tell: Don Pittis (CBC)

In some ways it would be easier to plan if we really knew for sure whether Canadian home prices were about to fall off a cliff as so many people keep predicting. But of course that's not how markets work. A difference of opinion about the future is one of the reasons why there is always a buyer for something you are anxious to unload.

Affordable Housing In Canada In Crisis As Rental Rates Climb, Supply Dwindles (Huffington Post)

"It's taken us a long time to get here, it's taken decades of ignoring the system," he said, adding it would take a least 10 years of government commitments to resolve the problem. "That is something that is difficult to do because it's expensive and it doesn't show immediate results."

USA

L.A.’s Bold Plan To Pack Its Backyards With More Housing (Fast Company)

The mayor and his team are already far ahead of schedule, with 68,000 new units having been completed or in advanced stages of development. Most of them are standard residences in traditional apartment complexes.

Can New York City Save Its Public Housing? (New York Times)

With New York City’s public housing chairwoman, Shola Olatoye, on her way out the door after months of criticism, controversy and recrimination, the focus should return to the 400,000 people who call public housing home.

How the Fair Housing Act Failed Black Homeowners (City Lab)

The Fair Housing Act—which Congress passed 50 years ago today, on April 11, 1968—had an impact on sellers and renters that was quickly felt. Progress was slow, but progress was visible. It has taken much longer, however, to uproot redlining and other practices by which banks routinized racial discrimination.