Toronto creating licensing system for landlords

Toronto creating licensing system for landlords

The city’s municipal licensing and standards committee voted Thursday to move ahead with a landlord licensing system for apartment buildings across Toronto. The goal: to crack down on bad landlords. Scarborough tenant Joy Ruscitti-Hayes said she would welcome the news. There’s garbage in her apartment building’s common rooms. Its stairwells sometimes double as bathrooms.

CBC News – Toronto Star – Canada Newswire

Cities can force developers to add low-cost housing

Ontario is set to give cities new powers to compel real estate developers to include affordable housing when they build subdivisions and condo towers. The Promoting Affordable Housing Act revealed Wednesday would allow a city council to force a developer to change its blueprints to include social housing. But exactly how that would work isn’t known yet.

CBC News – Urban Toronto – Toronto Star

Primecorp busy brokering Ontario multi-residential deals

Primecorp Commercial Realty/TCN Worldwide has had a pretty hectic past three months in overseeing seven Ontario multi-residential rental property sales. Here’s a look at the recent multi-residential deals Primecorp has brokered:

Property Biz Canada

Western Wealth Capital goes on Phoenix shopping spree

Western Wealth Capital Ltd., a Vancouver-based multiple-unit rental property investment firm, has been busy in the Phoenix multi-family market this month. This week, it acquired the Greater PHX IV Portfolio, a four-property, 748-unit, real-estate-owned portfolio for $41.5 million US (about $55,480 US/unit).

CoStar Group

The Canary District flickers to life

As Toronto’s long winter gradually gives way to spring, the Canary District has begun to flicker into life. Folks are moving into the shiny new condo blocks and the affordable housing complex and the 500-bed student residence – all of which last summer housed the athletes, coaches and officials on hand for the Pan American/Parapan American Games. 

Globe and Mail – Property Biz Canada – Property Biz Canada

Toronto unveils first non-smoking apartment building

In his first apartment, non-smoker Jonah Wolfraim was often invaded by cigarette smoke. Now, the only smell Wolfraim, 26, and his partner, Ilyse Lax, 27, expect to waft over their balcony or into their new apartment in the west-of-downtown neighbourhood of Little Portugal is the aroma of chocolate from the Cadbury factory a few blocks away.

Toronto Star

Many companies don’t properly track money laundering

​At least 85 real estate companies have not implemented a plan showing how they are trying to detect money laundering and other suspicious transactions, nearly 15 years after they were required to do so, according to data obtained by The Canadian Press. The federal anti-money laundering agency received 337 compliance reports from roughly 1,000 companies in the real estate sector it surveyed.

CBC News

Edmontonians revolt over lot-splitting

Legal measures to prevent any increased density are starting to take hold in half a dozen mature Edmonton neighbourhoods. Most residents of Westbrook have already signed a restrictive covenant to prevent lot-splitting or duplexes in perpetuity and several other neighbourhoods are organizing. “There’s a tremendous number of people upset with this,” said lawyer Victoria Archer.

Edmonton Journal

Shipping containers make suite digs in Edmonton’s back alleys

An Edmonton company is set to launch a new series of garage suites made out of shipping containers that could make a rental investment feasible for the typical homeowner. Honomobo builds the units in a factory just west of Stony Plain, installing them on top of a new garage in under a week.

Edmonton Journal – Edmonton Journal

B.C. real estate boards set to vote on merger

When members of the British Columbia Real Estate Association (BCREA) cast a ballot this summer to determine whether to dissolve the association in favour of a new provincewide professional standards entity called Realtors of B.C., the vote may be more about what realtors are willing to sacrifice to get organized real estate to a new, more efficient destination.

REMonline.com

Euro Properties might sell troubled NYC condo project

Asian investment firm Euro Properties made waves in 2014 when it announced its intention to become the first Chinese developer to build a ground-up Manhattan condominium. But its vision for the 29-unit “bespoke” tower at 118 East 59th Street haven’t gone as planned — the company is already shifting its marketing strategy to compete with nearby condo developments.

The Real Deal

Washington REIT closes on N. Virginia community

Washington Real Estate Investment Trust has closed on an apartment community in Alexandria, Va., consisting of 1,222 units and enough onsite density to develop additional units, for $244.8 million, the company announced. Riverside Apartments is comprised of three 15-storey concrete buildings on approximately 28 acres. The community is currently 98 per cent leased.

Multifamily Executive – MultifamilyBiz.com

Russian magnate bullish on Miami’s luxury condo market

While most developers are pulling back as Miami’s high-end condo market slows, Vladislav Doronin is pushing forward with a 57-storey luxury condo tower, and two more projects after it. The Russian real-estate magnate’s Miami-based development company OKO Group is spending about $1.3 billion Cdn to acquire the land and develop three local properties.

Miami Herald

U.S. luxury apartment boom gentrification on steroids

Across the U.S. a wave of dual-income couples and down-sizing baby-boomers are skipping home ownership and choosing apartment living instead. These elective nomads are pushing rents in American cities through the roof. Meanwhile, other renters — who have a median household income less than half that of homeowners — are finding fewer and fewer homes fit their budget.

Quartz

U.S. apartment construction hits ‘peak year’

Multi-family developers continue to churn out record levels of new supply ahead of what is expected to be a “peak year” for apartment construction in 2016. The number of new apartments under construction is at its highest level since the 1980s, and double the annual historical average seen over the last 34 years.

CoStar Group – MultifamilyBiz.com

	Fort McMurray wildfire news
	RENX will be summarizing news regarding the Fort McMurray wildfire and its consequences for the real estate industry in the following section of the newsletter.

 

Stop building in disaster-prone areas: Insurance bureau

Decision-makers across the country need to start saying no to proposed developments on flood plains or near fire-prone boreal forests like those around Fort McMurray to prevent widespread damage from future natural disasters, says Don Forgeron, president and CEO of the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

CTV News – CBC News

‘Why didn’t we all learn?’

As he stood with 35 homes and dozens of vehicles in flames around him, Lesser Slave Lake Regional Fire Chief Jamie Coutts was assaulted by a flood of thoughts. One was his team wasn’t trained to fight the kind of mega-fire that had roared out of the northeast Alberta forest in May 2011, igniting parts of Slave Lake.

Globe and Mail

Wildfire bigger than previously thought

Rain and cooler temperatures have allowed firefighters to better assess the size of the Fort McMurray wildfire, and it’s bigger than previous estimates suggested. The latest estimates peg the wildfire at 522,894 hectares on the Alberta side, and 2,496 hectares across the border into Saskatchewan, Laura Stewart, an Alberta wildfire information officer, confirmed.

Montreal Gazette

What Fort McMurray will look like on June 1

Unless fire hazards or other logistical setbacks intervene, Fort McMurray will be repopulated starting June 1. But it will not look like the city nearly 90,000 residents fled on May 3, with many key services still unavailable, many of McMurrayites’ homes in ruin and nobody’s home or neighbourhood quite the way they left it.

Maclean’s

Evacuees face tough decision about returning home

Two nights after Debbie Halfyard and husband Rick were evacuated, they saw on television what became of their two-storey house. Footage showed their street, and all that was left were basements and singed debris. “I said to my husband, ‘Look – there goes our house.’ And, of course, everybody cried,” she said from Deer Lake, N.L.

Globe and Mail

No spike expected for housing prices

Housing prices in Fort McMurray aren’t likely to spike significantly as a result of the wildfires, a Queen’s University real estate expert said Sunday. But the city should see some recovery from the drop in housing values seen after the oil price crash, said John Andrew, the chair of the university’s Real Estate Roundtable.

Calgary Herald

RENX Columnists

Boomers: The Coles Notes

For those of us not intimately familiar with the Boomers as a demographic, and how to market to them, what follows is a crash course to help you.

Read more

Market Conditions

Growth Plan changes mean higher prices: Opinion

The Proposed Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, 2016, alongside the Greenbelt Plan, Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan and Niagara Escarpment Plan, is designed to manage growth and the protection of the natural environment. There’s currently not much to be done except to continue to watch traffic slow down and home prices go up.

Newinhomes.com – Property Biz Canada

Condo market joins in Toronto’s real estate boom

The bidding melees that have flummoxed Toronto house hunters for years are erupting with increasing frequency in the condo market. A one-bedroom-plus-den near Trinity Bellwoods Park on Queen Street West recently landed on the market with an asking price of $499,000. The unit drew 13 offers and sold for $585,000.

Globe and Mail

RENX Market Summaries

	REITs & REOCs – First-quarter 2016 report
	RENX has prepared a table with a convenient list of the companies and a summary of links to their reports that will be updated quarterly. First-quarter results are now arriving. Canadian REITs & REOCs – First-quarter 2016 report

 

Mortgage and Finance

Ottawa aimed to tread lightly with new mortgage rules

Ottawa was concerned about the potential of triggering a housing market slowdown when it opted only to modestly increase minimum down payments on more expensive homes late last year, new documents show.

Globe and Mail (Subscription required)

New Developments

Lindvest’s Sonic Condos capitalizes on Crosstown LRT

Located near Eglinton and Don Mills, the site of Lindvest Properties‘ two-tower Sonic Condos is located within walking distance of some of Toronto’s cultural jewels, including the Ontario Science Centre, the Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre, and the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre. The Crosstown LRT is expected to come online by 2022.

Urban Toronto

Natural Disasters

Fire evacuation orders lifted for Eastern Manitoba

Some residents and cottagers in eastern Manitoba are being allowed to return to their properties. Evacuation orders for Nora and Florence lakes have been lifted by the province, but emergency crews remain in the area for any forest fire flare-ups. Burning permits remain cancelled for the central and eastern regions of Manitoba until conditions improve.

CBC News

Affordable Housing

New investors enter affordable housing sector

New American investors with little or no experience in operating affordable housing are bidding high for aging rental housing communities built with affordable housing programs. “Affordable housing has become a commodity that is traded through brokers,” says Scott Kline, vice-president for the National Housing Trust (NHT). “And there are a lot of bidders.”

National Real Estate Investor

U.S. rental costs surging past incomes

Rent price growth matched the highest since the financial crisis, another indication of the imbalance in the nation’s housing market. In April, rent was 3.7% higher than a year ago, the same 12-month rate of increase for the fifth month in a row. That’s the highest since before the financial crisis, and it’s much bigger than pay increases.

MarketWatch

Buying and Selling

Flipping seminars trigger BBB warning

The Better Business Bureau is warning people about some real estate flipping seminars offered recently in Vancouver. According to Evan Kelly, the BBB has received 157 complaints — both in the U.S. and and Canada — about what consumers describe as “misleading and manipulative marketing practices” at seminars run by the Utah company Success Path Education.

Huffington Post

Other

Windsor homebuilder nabs customer service award

Windsor-area builder Kolody Homes was among four Ontario homebuilders to receive the 2016 Homeowners’ Choice awards. The awards are given to homebuilders for excellence in customer service. “Today’s best companies know that positive reviews by real customers are the key to success,” said Howard Bogach, Tarion president and CEO.

Windsor Star

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