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This Week in Toronto Real Estate
I'm back with my semi-regular round up of news related to real estate in Toronto. Quite a lot going on this week as the first week of March is traditionally represents the beginning of the spring market and the busiest time of the year for the real estate industry.
Students and homeless people rejoice: the line up for condos at College Park is over and finally everyone can go home and get some sleep. Things were fairly civil although it briefly turned ugly before order was restored as agents got their priority numbers and were allowed to go home.
Rather than continue to lease it out a prime piece of property on Bloor Street for pennies on the dollar, the city decided to sell it for pennies on the dollar. McDonald's bought the property across from the ROM for $3.38 million that is probably worth at least $8 million. McDonald's in turn has plans to sell it the property developer Bazis International-the Kazakhstan-based developer behind the infamous 1 Bloor project. I can picture it now: high-end Yorkville condos with a McDonald's in the building!
Harry Stinson-the one-time condo king of Toronto is going to try his luck in Hamilton of all places with a proposed condo tower above an historic downtown hotel. This is very befitting of the city of Hamilton's current marketing campaign: "If you can't make it there, you can make it it in Hamilton!" 80-storeys of glass and steel in downtown Hamilton, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
And finally, the numbers are in and the results are somewhat surprising. The Toronto Real Estate Board is reporting that sales in February were down 14% in Toronto versus February of last year. Two possible causes include the introduction of the new land transfer tax, the terrible weather we had in February.
Photo by . Spiral . from the blogTO Flickr pool.
Andrew la Fleur is a registered real estate agent and regular contributor of blogTO.
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New condos are certainly a good start, but lets see a renewed airport, historic streetscape restorations, light rail, microbrews, lofts, arts expansions and all that other good stuff now happening in smaller, post-industrial US cities. Hamilton has the bones to be a great small city in a new golden age of cities.
PS -- no disrespecting Steeltown allowed.
I agree, Hamilton does have good bones and will one day be a fine small city. Daring entrepreneurs like Stinson are exactly what the city needs. But seriously, 80 storeys in Hamilton?! Remember how much resistance the idea of 80 storeys got at Yonge and Bloor? But that's why I kinda like Stinson-he's not afraid to rock the boat.
? In January, sales of pre-owned homes across Canada fell 6%, or an annualized rate of more than 70%, says the Canadian Real Estate Association.
? The number of people saying they are very likely to buy a new home within the next two years has hit the lowest point in 15 years, says a poll conducted by the Royal Bank.
? Home resales in Toronto last month crashed by 14%, says the Toronto Real Estate Board while price appreciation slows to 2% year
? The number of people trying to unload their houses has suddenly mushroomed. Listings soared to a new record in January across Canada, up 9% in a single month, says CREA.
? Stats Can reported that building permit applications plunged a third month in a row, stunning economists.
? Canada will most like be in a Recession this year. Canadas economy came to a screeching halt in December as its GDP shrank.
Would you buy now?
To your last point, Canada's economy did not come to a "screeching halt" in December or any time in the last while. You make it sound like we are Somalia or something. We're not -- we are rich babies able to spend our money on designer coffees, expensive dogs and iPods.
But yeah, BAD time to buy real estate.
I agree. Definately not a good time to buy. Historically Real Estate has been cyclical: BOOM and BUST, so the above numbers posted are no surprise given the 10 years of boom we have had.