In the City: The province introduces a rent control exemption that could hurt Toronto tenants and the secret of the Four Seasons.
Elsewhere: The Canadian housing market is not heading towards a crash, for now, why Amazon's HQ2 decision was all about transportation and will UK house prices ever rise again?
Toronto
Don't let the cost of commuting from the suburbs fool you: It's still cheaper to live there (Financial Post)
Furthermore, the study estimates commuting costs using median distances and does not factor travel times directly into the calculation. It further estimates suburban transit trip costs by regional train service (in this case, Go Transit) “for each municipality as the monthly fare (40 one-way trips) to commute to Union Station” in downtown Toronto.
Doug Ford's rent control exemption will make housing less affordable for Toronto tenants (Daily Hive)
“Landlords and Doug Ford must be the only people in Toronto that think rents aren’t high enough already,” said Matlow, chair of the Tenant Issues Committee. “Tenants deserve to have the security of knowing they won’t be evicted from their homes because they can’t afford an overnight doubling in their rent.
Removing rent control on new units won’t ease Toronto’s housing crisis, tenant and housing experts say (Toronto Star)
The Ontario government’s removal of rent controls on new, previously unoccupied rental units will mean higher housing costs in the future but won’t do much to relieve Toronto’s historically low vacancy rate, at least in the near term, say tenant and housing experts.
Secrets Of The Four Seasons (The Star)
The Four Seasons Private Residences Toronto is one of the most prestigious condo developments in the country. So why have one third of unit sales been for a loss?
Canada
The Canadian housing market is out of the woods when it comes to a crash — for now (Livabl)
“While affordability is a huge concern, particularly in large cities, Vanguard economists consider that the risk of a sharp correction — defined as a correction in the space of a year which severely impacts the economy or causes a recession — is low for markets studied, including Canada,” reads the report.
A conversation about housing has to start with numbers. Whether you’re a tenant struggling to find a home or a government crafting new policy during a nationwide housing crisis, you need to have a grip on good data.
Liberals look to build positive frame around billions in housing spending (Canadian Press)
The first details from the Liberal government’s decade-long housing plan show early spending has helped keep some 14,000 households in affordable units. The national housing strategy is only a few months old, with many parts of the plan having launched in April and more to roll out in the coming months.
USA
Amazon’s HQ2 Decision Was Always About Transit (City Lab)
Those who tuned in from the very first episode of Amazon’s hunt for an HQ2 may recall one telling element of the initial bid for its next quarters outside of Seattle: The tech giant wanted good transportation.
Capitalism Can’t Give Us Affordable Housing (Jacobin)
Under capitalism, housing provision is based on what will make developers, lenders, and landlords rich — not what average people need to survive. That’s why we’ll never get decent, affordable housing for everyone under the free market.
California’s newly homeless fire victims face the state’s severe housing shortage (Vox)
The effects of the Camp Fire will continue to linger long after the embers die down and the smoke blows away. The search for a long-term refuge will only add to the woes of evacuees, some of whom are living in makeshift campsites and others who are contending with norovirus outbreaks in shelters.
International
Will UK house prices ever rise again? (Financial Times)
There’ll be volatility here for a while — a post-Brexit bounce seems inevitable, for example, and a bout of consumer price inflation is likely over the next decade (you can see it coming in rising wages), something that might make holding real assets such as property not the worst idea in the world.
The country where 96% of homes are privately owned (BBC)
Romania ranks first in the world for private home ownership. But that doesn’t mean buying a home is easy, says Ioana Moldovan.
Country Garden rolls out first batch of Hong Kong flats, pricing some units at below cost (South China Morning Post)
Country Garden Holdings, China’s largest developer by sales, is bracing for a potential loss on its majority-owned residential project in Ma On Shan, as an initial batch of flats are being released at a starting price below development cost, according to analysts.
November 23, 2018
This Week In Real Estate |