REDISCOVER REAL ESTATE

Grosvenor Ranks Toronto #1

Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary are the world’s top cities for long-term real estate investment, a report by Grosvenor’s research said this week.

On April 9th the Financial Post published an article with the recent findings of the Grosvenor. For those that don't know The Grosvenor is an international property development company based in the U.K that ranks the world's Top 50 cities based on their resilience and how well they can cope with adverse events. Based on their findings Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary are the top 3 Cities in the world for long term Real Estate Investment. The Financial post Writes,

“The investment of city leaders in infrastructure and its commitment to upgrading it over the decades has put Toronto at the top of Grosvenor’s list of the world’s most resilient cities,” said Richard Barkham, Grosvenor’s Group research director. “For investors in property and real estate, it makes Canada a very sound long-term investment.”

This is excellent news for Toronto home owners and investors. Despite all of the media hype of a bubble and impending Real Estate doom the market continues to be resilient and quite competitive. Those listening to the naysayers and sitting on the sidelines are missing out on excellent investment opportunities that is being recognized by the global Real Estate Investment Community. Take a look at where other major Cities fall on the graph below:

IThinking of investing in Toronto's Real Estate Market? There are various options for investors with varying price ranges and I can provide you with all of the necessary information to make the best informed investment.

 

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Hogtown is Condo Town!

Is Canada’s biggest city turning into a condo town?

According to the Building Industry and Land Development Association, only 35 new “low-rise” homes – also known as single-family houses – were sold last month in Toronto, home to 2.79 million people.

That was down from 50 new homes in the same month last year and a fraction of the 885 new high-rise unit – or condominium – sales in February. BILD’s figures don’t include existing homes that are essentially rebuilt, a BILD spokesman said.

With 20 times as many new condo sales as sales of single-family homes, it’s becoming increasingly clear that condos are becoming a permanent fixture of the city’s skyline.

The reason? There’s not a lot of space to build anything anymore in Toronto, once nicknamed Hogtown.

Thanks to a provincial cap that limits urban sprawl, developers are opting to build up rather than across to address the growing demand for new homes, said Gary Switzer, chair of BILD’s Toronto chapter and the CEO of MOD Developments, a real-estate developer.

“There’s suburban home builders that saw a slowing market occurring in the hinterlands of Toronto, while changing demographics and affordability is making people want to live back in the heart of the city,” Mr. Switzer told Canada Real Time.

The scarcity of new homes being built in Toronto will undoubtedly push prices of single-family homes even higher, leading many first-time homeowners to seek a more affordable option like a condo.

“The shortage of single-family homes for sale combined with strained affordability for first-time buyers will buoy resale condominium demand in the year ahead, though prices should be restrained by sizeable new inventory of recently completed units” said Adrienne Warren, an economist at Scotiabank, in a research note released Friday.

Mr. Switzer said that, while single-family homes will never disappear from the market, more families will choose to live in condos, a move that might change the makeup of some neighborhoods in Toronto.

“It’s almost becoming like New York,” he said. “You get a nice two-bedroom [unit], you stay there and as soon as you get a kid, you don’t feel like you have to move to the suburbs.”

The average price of a home in the Greater Toronto Area – an area that spans across five regional counties – went up 8.6% in February to 553,193 Canadian dollars ($500,627), according to the Toronto Real Estate Board.

According to BILD, the average price of a new low-rise home in the GTA was C$656,814 last month, up 3% from a year earlier, while the cost of a new high-rise unit was up 2% to C$438,556.

Source: The Wall Street Journal Canada (DAVID GEORGE-COSH)

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