A house on Munro Park in The Beach with an asking price of $1.3M recently sold for an incredible $1.9M - roughly $600,000 over the asking price. The event set off a bit of a media storm as everyone from 680 News to CTV to The Financial Post covered the story this week. 680 News even called me to weigh in on the issue.

It's becoming the year of the bidding war as the Toronto Real Estate Market isn't showing any signs of slowing down any time soon. The summer months of July and August are traditionally a slow time of year in Real Estate-but not this year. Properties are regularly selling for over their asking price all over the city and the idea of getting a bargain has become like the quest for the Holy Grail.

As if it wasn't embarrassing enough that after 6 years since the project was announced, Trump Tower still isn't anything more than a nifty Sales Centre at Bay and Adelaide, it was just announced that the project will be cut back from the original 70 storeys to a not-as-impressive 57.

To say that sales have been slow is an understatement. Dozens of condo towers have been conceived, pre-sold, built, inhabited, and the units resold since Trump first informed Toronto that he had eyes for us way back in 2001. (Those were the good old days of Real Estate in Toronto, when a quarter million used to get you a palace in the sky. Nowadays you can barely get your foot in the door of the condo market for $250,000!)

Trump's representatives say that the cut back to the height of the towers has more to do with mechanical issues than with the admittedly lackluster sales. Anecdotally, there are those in the city's Real Estate and Development circles who still aren't convinced the Tower will ever be built, despite the fact that Trump's people are saying construction will begin in September.

What's to blame for the slow sales? Back in March Trump called Toronto's Real Estate Market 'soft'. In response the Toronto Real Estate Market proceeded to have record sales in April, May, and June. Most likely the astronomical prices of the suites combined with the questionable location (dead-centre in the financial district) were important factors explaining why sales were so poor.

Photo from the blogTO Flickr pool.

Those crazy folks at Concord, the developer behind CityPlace are getting revved up for their next master planned community in Toronto: Concord Park Place at Leslie and Sheppard. They've gone all web 2.0y and released a YouTube promo video for the project. Seriously, who wouldn't want to live in a 'Communicity'?

Despite a tremendous outcry from the public and special interest groups, it looks like David Miller has gained the necessary approvals for his controversial new land transfer tax. What does this mean to prospective home buyers? To put it simply, on an average home purchase in Toronto of $400,000, the land transfer tax portion of your closing costs just jumped from $4500 to $9000. This doubling of the effective tax rate will raise the city an extra $300 million per year.

This is a cash grab in the worst possible way. Taxes will be doubled but home buyers will have nothing to show for it. Miller says that raising these taxes are the only way to pay for the City's massive budget shortfall. Apparently he sees no other solution than to force the entire financial burden of the city upon 5% of it's residents (home buyers make up about 5% of the city's residents in any given year).

Toronto will soon have the highest land transfer tax rate in the country, and possibly the entire continent, depending on how it finally shakes down. Home buyers contribute approximately $2 billion to the city's economy. This number is all but guaranteed to decrease once this new tax goes through. Make no mistake, the city will feel the impact of this new tax.

I could go on and on, but I won't. After all, my bias as a Real Estate Agent is obvious. What about you blogTO? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this issue.

Photo by funkaoshi from the blogTO Flickr pool.

Toronto is a city in transition. The debate goes on as to whether or not we are truly one of the world's greatest cities, or we are simply a contender; waiting in the wings for our moment to show the world what we can do. Along the way one of the major growing pains that we are dealing with is what should we do with our old buildings?

The scarcity of land combined with the never-been-higher demand for condos and housing in the downtown core means many old buildings are being bought simply for the dirt that's under them rather than the 100+ years of history that they contain inside their 4 walls. Should we fight to preserve our history, or should we stop being so sentimental and grow up (literally).

Remember how I said April was the best month ever on record for the Toronto Real Estate Board? Yeah well, I have to retract my blog post because May completely and totally obliterated the record set by April.

The 11,146 sales that occurred in May topped the 9,452 that happened in April by a whopping 18%. May 2007 was also 18% of May 2006. After five months, 2007 is 8% ahead of 2006 in terms of overall sales. The good news for buyers or would-be buyers is that even though sales are sky rocketing to never before seen levels, prices in May creeped up by only 5% over May of last year.

For those of you who are still predicting the impending doom of the real estate market in Toronto, now would be a good time for the three of you to consider a new hobby. For full details, and all the numbers, check out TREB's Market Watch.

Photo by myker from the blogTO flickr pool.