This week's news: Home sales in fall, $100k lost in value, Toronto theatre battles back

Toronto

Toronto home sales soften in August, but fall could see market warm up (CBC News)

The GTA's real estate market continued to cool off last month, with less homes selling and less homes being listed when compared with August 2016.

The Toronto Real Estate Board's sales numbers for August 2017, released Wednesday morning, show that the number of homes sold in the GTA in August decreased by 34.8 per cent compared to August 2016.

Toronto independent theatre battles back, but the war isn't won (The Toronto Star)

Toronto’s real estate market continues to be the city’s favourite topic of conversation, between tenant protests over rent hikes in Parkdale, complaints about Airbnb rentals in Kensington Market and a Toronto Life cover story about a wealthy family renovating a former crack house.

The conversation around who gets to live and work in downtown Toronto and for how much dominates our collective consciousness, which is something Toronto’s indie theatre community knows all too well.

Toronto Houses Are Losing Value At A Rate Of $100,000 A Month (The Huffington Post)

Many market analysts have declared that the party's over in Toronto's real estate market.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the city's detached home market, where the average price has fallen by nearly $400,000 in the space of four months.

Canada

Canada had 1 city where people were worth over $1M last year. There are 4 now (Global News)

Just a year ago, Vancouver was lonely at the top.

Back then, the West Coast city was the only one across the Great White North where people had average household net worth of over $1 million, according to Environics Analytics.

Canadian real estate to enter cooldown period later this year—poll (Mortgagebrokernews.ca)

The vibrant pace of growth and activity in the Canadian residential real estate sector is likely to moderate quite a bit in late 2017 as well as early 2018, in large part due to the possibility of higher interest rates along with government policies aimed at chilling demand in major markets.

This according to a recent Reuters quarterly poll of industry analysts nationwide, some from Canada’s biggest banks.

Central bank interest rate hikes begin to squeeze indebted consumers (Vancouver Sun)

The Bank of Canada’s increase to its key interest rate Wednesday, the second bump since July, will start putting a more noticeable squeeze on consumers holding variable rate mortgages, lines of credit or any consumer debt tied to bank prime lending rates, according to experts.

“It won’t necessarily have an affect on people trying to get into the (property) market,” Vancity mortgage expert Ryan McKinley said. “Who it does affect is people who already have some kind of variable rate (loan), variable rate mortgage or credit-line mortgages.”

USA

Hurricane Irma could be a $300 billion catastrophe if it hits South Florida (WKYC.com)

MIAMI — Twenty-five years ago last month, Hurricane Andrew unleashed its Category 5 wrath on South Florida, sending a catastrophic reminder about the dangers of living in the heart of "hurricane alley."

But drive along any coastline in Florida today and you'll find construction cranes as plentiful as palm trees as developers rush to build high-rises in the most beautiful, and vulnerable, corners of the state.

U.S. Firm Readies REIT Listing in Singapore – WSJ (Fox Business)

KBS Realty Advisors LLC, an American real-estate investment firm, is planning to raise about $500 million via a Singapore initial public offering of some of its U.S. office assets, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Newport Beach, Calif.-based company is in talks with the asset-management arm of Singapore conglomerate Keppel Corp. to form a joint venture that they plan to list as a real-estate investment trust later this year, the people said.

U.S. Home Builders Ask Trump for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (World Property Journal)

Granger MacDonald, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder and developer from Kerrville, Texas, issued the following statement after the Trump administration announced this week it would wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has allowed young people known as "Dreamers" who were brought to this country illegally as children to live and work:

"President Trump's call to Congress to find a permanent legislative solution to protect the 'Dreamers' underscores the urgent need for lawmakers to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Given the chronic shortage of residential construction workers, there has never been a more critical time for Congress to enact effective reforms that would help revitalize the economy and boost the housing sector.

International

Foreign Investors Drive One Third of Commercial Investments in Australia (World Property Journal)

According to CBRE, Australia's commercial real estate remains an attractive asset class for offshore capital, with foreign investors accounting for 33% of all transaction activity in the first half of 2017.

New CBRE Research shows Asia remains a key source of this capital, with approximately $1.6 billion of Asian outbound capital directly invested into Australian property in the first six months of 2017.

Almost a third of UK tenants feel they will never own their own home (Property Wire)

Almost a third of people renting a property in the UK cannot imagine ever owning their own home, a new study has found, with many worried about rent rises.

Overall 31% think they will not be able to buy and 21% think that the removal of mortgage interest tax relief on buy to let properties, which came into force in April 2017, will reduce the supply of rented properties in their area.

BlackRock tips flood of foreign capital to continue (The Australian)

BlackRock Real Assets director Hamish MacDonald told a Queensland Property Council forum yesterday the investor expected 8.9 per cent year-on-year growth in capital flows into real assets including property from now until 2020.