Developers have become Toronto’s new city builders

Developers have become Toronto’s new city builders

Conventional wisdom has it Toronto is all full up, that there’s no room left in this ark. Not quite. In fact, there are probably more large-scale mixed-use projects underway in the city than at any time in its recent history. They’re happening at unwanted malls and in parking lots, at decommissioned school properties and industrial sites. And let’s not forget the massive Downsview Park and, of course, the waterfront.

Toronto Star

CRE professional buys Toronto’s cube homes

One of Toronto’s more curious experiments in modern architecture, the modular green “cube” homes nestled beside the Don Valley Parkway at 1 Sumach St., have been sold for redevelopment. “We haven’t made any formal submissions,” commercial real estate professional Taso Boussoulas said, noting he acquired the structure on 8,700 square feet of land with real estate developer Jeff Craig for $2,750,000.

Toronto Star

Toronto’s innovative The Plant wins BILD award

The Plant won’t be completed for more than a year, but the mixed-use development at 41 Dovercourt Rd. in Toronto is off to a great start as BILD’s mid-/high-rise project of the year. “We’re very pleased to have won the award, especially given the many other projects that are now underway in the Toronto area,” said Alex Speigel, a partner with Windmill Development Group.

Property Biz Canada

New condo buyers venture west of GTA: Altus

New condominium buyers deterred by soaring Toronto prices are apparently venturing further afield to Hamilton, Kitchener and Waterloo, which offer more bang for their buck and the promise of new transit links. Sales of new condominiums in these areas gained “notable traction” in the first six months of the year as regional economic activity picked up and Metrolinx moved forward with its $43-billion expansion plans, according to Altus Group.

Financial Post – Toronto Star

Shopping malls could be key to suburban densification

The problem with so many suburbs is there’s just no there there. Vancouver urbanist Brent Toderian thus described the central problem with ill-considered densification projects in the suburbs. Montreal’s regional plan has identified densification in suburban areas near Métro stations, bus loops and future REM lines as a way to limit urban sprawl and encourage people to drive less.

Montreal Gazette

Montreal’s hot market spawns bidding wars

Montreal’s sizzling real estate market has spawned bidding wars, a common occurrence in recent years in the frenzied Toronto and Vancouver markets, but a rare phenomenon in Canada’s second-largest city. A mix of very low inventory, a solid Quebec economy and influx of foreign buyers has caused home prices in Greater Montreal to appreciate above the national average for the first time in seven years

CTV

Protesters clash with developer of Parc-Ex condo

A confrontation turned violent as community groups rushed the Côte-des-Neiges offices of real estate developer BSR Group Thursday afternoon to rally against gentrification that they say can push longtime residents out of Parc-Extension. “Ron Basal has got to go!” the demonstrators chanted against the developer’s project manager as they clashed with employees. The two groups fought each other for entry into the offices as police were called.

Montreal Gazette

Ontario’s cottage country locals battle big-city buyers

Finding the perfect home is a challenge many Torontonians know all too well. But as lack of affordability and scarcity of properties drive buyers out of city bounds, those native to cottage country are feeling the effects. Real estate agents say properties in Haliburton County, and other cottage country areas with proximity to Toronto, have become increasingly scarce in recent years. 

Globe and Mail

Manitoba cottage prices projected to slide

Despite Canadians flocking to lakes and streams for summer getaways, cottage prices are expected to see a slight dip in Manitoba, with one notable exception. Against the backdrop of a strong forecasted national recreational property market — with most provinces expected to experience significant price increases — Manitoba is an outlier, with a projected decline in average cottage price.

Winnipeg Free Press

Half of Ontario boomers willing to downsize

The most affluent generation in Canadian history isn’t convinced it needs to downsize. Even baby boomers who expect to move to a smaller home in the next five years are waiting for the kids to leave and casting about for more affordable accommodation in their retirement years. Meantime the boomers, the cohort born between 1946 and 1964, are renovating rather than moving.

Toronto Star – Vancouver Province – Newinhomes.com

Liveaboards escape sky-high Toronto rents with life on water

When Donna Creighton retired from her career as an elementary school teacher, she faced a difficult choice.  She loved her North York townhouse, but the relentlessly rising costs of living in the city meant she would need to supplement her pension income with another job to make her mortgage payments. “And then I quite accidentally saw an ad for a houseboat that was up for sale,” Creighton says.

CBC

Inside Ottawa’s booming rental market

In late 2017, local realtor Steve Peippo started noticing something exceptional was going on in Ottawa’s residential rental market. Prospective tenants competing for rental properties were offering more than the listed price, or offering longer rental terms — anything to gain an advantage. Only a few months prior, a federal government report found Ottawa landlords were raising rents in response to tight rental market conditions.

Ottawa Citizen

Review calls for restrictions on protected B.C. farmland

An independent committee says B.C. should limit the size of homes permitted on its protected agricultural land, to slow a construction boom in mansions and tamp down real estate speculation and development on some of province’s most fertile farmland. The eight-member group submitted a report to the agricultural minister with 13 recommendations for legislative and regulatory change that would better protect B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).

Globe and Mail – CBC

Construction of rental housing booms in West Shore

DB Services Victoria is so busy building rental projects in Langford it turns away new projects every month, says the director of development. The Langford-based firm is one of the developers supporting the West Shore’s building boom, where rental apartments, condominiums and single-family houses are under construction. In the first seven months of this year, 911 housing units were started in Langford, far outpacing other Greater Victoria municipalities.

Victoria Times Colonist

Toronto condo owner wins Airbnb case against tenant

A Toronto landlord who discovered her condo unit was being rented out repeatedly on Airbnb — behind her back by someone tied to a property management company — has won her case at the Landlord and Tenant Board. The recent decision follows a March CBC Toronto investigation that exposed how multiple condo owners’ units were being listed on the home sharing website by a “host.”

CBC

RENX Columnists

Condo designs should reflect the diversity of your city

Members of the general public often criticize new condominiums for any number of reasons, including the appearance of the buildings. Few people, however, realize the substantial role government and municipal bureaucrats play in new urban building/community design.

Read more

Market Conditions

Industry taking a wait-and-see approach to market

The Canadian real estate industry is used to disregarding gloomy predictions. But now, after a decade of laughing in the face of repeated false warnings that a housing slump was imminent, most Canadians affected by real estate — in other words, just about all of us — have suddenly become a little more wary. No one disputes the meteoric rise in Canadian house prices has come to an end.

CBC

Three possible scenarios for Vancouver’s housing market

Will Vancouver home prices tank, surge ever higher or settle somewhere in between? With help from disgruntled residents, global investors and government intervention, here’s how the city’s real estate future could play out, for better or worse.

BC Business

Ottawa-Gatineau housing starts drop sharply in July

Housing starts in Ottawa-Gatineau dropped off in July, mirroring a national downturn following near-record highs in new home construction across the country the previous month, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. Builders in the region broke ground on 853 new dwellings last month, CMHC said, a 34 per cent decline from the 1,291 starts recorded a year earlier.

Ottawa Business Journal – Globe and Mail – Newinhomes.com

U.S. metro home prices climb to all-time high

Amidst staggeringly low inventory levels in much of the U.S. during the second quarter, existing-homes sales cooled and home prices maintained their robust level of appreciation, according to the latest quarterly report by the National Association of Realtors. The national median existing single-family home price in the second quarter was $269,000, up 5.3 percent from the second quarter of 2017 ($255,400).

PR Newswire

Mortgage and Finance

Vancouver mortgage defaults plunge as home prices increase

The federal government’s mortgage stress test was expanded in January in a bid to protect homeowners from becoming overextended, particularly in Vancouver, which has the highest average home prices in Canada. Yet the latest data on mortgage defaults shows Vancouver homeowners have the lowest delinquency rate in the country at 0.08 per cent, one of the tiniest ever recorded.

Western Investor

Natural Disasters

Tariffs increase rebuilding costs for U.S. wildfire victims

Add this to the challenges facing California wildfire victims: Tariffs. The import tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump are adding thousands of dollars to the cost of building homes. That especially squeezes homeowners who seek to rebuild quickly after losing their houses to natural disasters, such as the wildfires scorching parts of California.

Toronto Star

Legal Issues

North Vancouver takes Airbnb hostel battle to court

The City of North Vancouver is asking the courts to step in and demand that a local woman stop using her three-bedroom townhouse as an Airbnb hostel. Emily Yu’s strata and the city have told her repeatedly to stop renting out 15 beds in her unit for short-term accommodation, and B.C.’s Civil Resolution Tribunal has upheld nearly $7,000 in strata bylaw fines against her.

CBC

Cities, Towns and Urban Issues

Bylaw changes could add 1,600 secondary suites in Edmonton

More than 1,600 extra secondary suites could be up for rent in Edmonton in the coming years if city council agrees to change existing rules. The current bylaw allows secondary suites only in single-detached homes with a minimum lot size of 3,875 square feet. The city wants to amend the zoning bylaw so owners of semi-detached houses, duplexes and row houses around Edmonton could also rent out self-contained suites.

CBC – Edmonton Journal

Other

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