Flat Is The New Hot In Canadian Home Prices
So far, Toronto sellers have been holding and hoping that 2017 prices will bounce back, but with clampdowns on money laundering and foreign inflows, the large inventory of properties priced over $2m are less in demand.
And with the majority of baby boomers over-housed, undersaved and looking to downsize, there is little reason to expect selling pressure to relent anytime soon. Flat prices are now seen as relative strength in the GTA.
The Toronto Real Estate Board Market Watch report was released earlier this week and Realosophy’s John Pasalis joined BNN Bloomberg’s Amber Kanwar and Jon Erlichman to discuss what the numbers mean. Key topics included why Toronto’s real estate market remains stable so far while the Vancouver market has plunged 31%, the impact of investment (both foreign and domestic) and banking policy changes (such as mortgage stress tests) and the sluggish recovery in the Greater Toronto Area’s York Region. Here is a direct video link.
Disclosure: None.
Last I heard Canada was looking for laws to staunch the flows of overseas money going into investing into its real estate. Although higher prices are good for sellers, having your housing eaten up for investing creates a whole new mess of problems. Housing still needs to be primarily for people to live in. This is an important but strangely overlooked issue these days.