Home Search Moves To Smaller Cities + A Push For Speculation Tax

In the City: The Toronto home search moves to smaller Ontario cities and the GTA leads Canadian home sales.

Elsewhere: The average Canadian home sells for slightly higher and New Zealand bans foreign buyers.

Toronto

Toronto home search moves to smaller Ontario cities (Toronto Star)

“I call it the Toronto migration ” said real estate broker John DeBlock. “It’s not only from Toronto, though. Toronto people have gone to Kitchener. Kitchener people have come to London.”

Canadian home sales tick higher in July, led by Greater Toronto Area market (Canadian Press)

"Essentially, stabilization in the Toronto region has been offset by a pullback in other areas, notably much of Western Canada," said BMO Financial Group chief economist Douglas Porter.

Alarmed by rising home prices, Toronto residents push for speculation tax (The Globe and Mail)

Earlier this year in a “blink and you might miss it” moment, a plywood billboard was erected in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods park inscribed with two bold proclamations: “Gentrification Tax” was the opening shot, and “The real estate market is destroying this city” was the chaser.

Critics blast Giorgio Mammoliti's 'cockroach' comments, while councillor says he's received a death threat (CBC)

Mammoliti also advocates for a plan to completely knock down the area's social housing buildings and replace them with mixed housing in an interview conducted just over two months from a municipal election in which he'll seek re-election.

Canada

Average Canadian house sold for $481,500 last month, up 1% in past year (CBC)

"July was a good month for housing markets, as sales increased for the third straight month alongside another rise in prices," Toronto-Dominion Bank economist Rishi Sondhi said after the numbers were released. "This lends further credence to our view that markets have shaken off the bout of policy-induced weakness in the earlier part of the year."

Here's Where House Prices Have Risen And Fallen Across Canada (Huffington Post)

Similarly in Vancouver, the index rose by a mild 0.4 per cent in July, but if adjusted for seasonal differences, prices have fallen for the past two months, Pinsonneault said. The Vancouver index is 10.6 per cent higher than a year ago, thanks to strength in the market late last year.

Liberals need to make housing a human right in Canadian law, advocates say (Global)

Without such a declaration, the legislation that’s expected to be unveiled this fall that will bring that strategy into force will be rendered toothless, said Tim Richter, president of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness.

USA

The Cities Where You Get the Biggest Bang for Your Buck (City Lab)

Americans, especially lower-income ones, are moving less than ever. But it may not take a drastic cross-country move to live in a metro with similar job opportunities where salaries go further. Kolko also provides a list of metros with cost-of-living-adjusted salaries of metros that are less than 500 miles apart, and largely overlap in the kinds of job openings available. Birmingham, Alabama, for example, offers salaries are, on average, 22 percent higher than in Tampa, Florida.

How America's foreclosure capital came back from the dead (CNN)

Now, ten years after the depths of the financial crisis, the area has mostly healed. Median single-family home prices in Lee County have more than tripled from the bottom reached in 2011, unemployment is below the national average at 3.2%, and construction is everywhere.

Airbnb Shows Them the Money. Is It Enough to Turn Albany Lawmakers’ Heads? (New York Times)

The multimillion-dollar donation signals a renewed effort by Airbnb to rally support in Albany after a string of failed attempts over the years to persuade lawmakers to change state law to legitimize the home-sharing service, which has grown increasingly popular among New Yorkers.