The housing index results announced this week were enough to convince some that a major correction is coming to Toronto, potentially far beyond what has already been seen.
Our weekly roundup of real estate news from Toronto, Canada, the U.S., and around the world ending Aug. 18, 2017.
Toronto
Toronto's housing market is seeing a massive decline in prices — or is it? (Financial Post)
Toronto’s existing homes market is seeing a massive decline in prices — or is it? The latest numbers from the Teranet-National Bank Composite House Index look like they tell a different story.
The index, released Monday, shows Toronto prices actually rose 2.1 per cent from June to July and national prices were up two per cent from a month earlier. The Toronto results, at first glance, appear out of sync with Toronto Real Estate Board results which show prices have declined almost 21.5 per cent from a peak hit in mid-April before the province put in measures like a foreign buyer tax to cool the market in and around the city.
Toronto And Vancouver Housing Is Going To Get Even Pricier (Huffington Post)
Housing in Toronto and Vancouver is very expensive, and it is going to get worse.
The respective provincial governments took action to combat the rapid price growth in these metro areas, with the biggest moves being taxes aimed at foreign buyers. The immediate reaction to the taxes were huge declines in transactions in the resale market.
Toronto has more housing than you think — and that could be a problem (Financial Post)
When it comes to Toronto’s runaway housing prices, the most important question remains the extent to which speculation is driving demand.
Ideally, fundamentals such as demographics and employment are at play, and the price gains reflect natural household growth getting ahead of supply. If that’s true, the market should eventually stabilize once new supply kicks in.
Canada
Average price of Canadian homes sold in July inched down 0.3% to $478,696 in past year (CBC News)
The average selling price of a Canadian home has fallen by 0.3 per cent in the past year, the first yearly decline since 2013.
The average price of a Canadian home sold on the multiple listing service (MLS) in July was $478,696, the Canadian Real Estate Association said Tuesday.
Cushman & Wakefield enters Ottawa property management with 20 VIC acquisition (Ottawa Business Journal)
Cushman & Wakefield’s latest acquisition puts a few local properties under new management and continues an expansion of the global brokerage firm’s Canadian services.
The U.S.-based commercial real estate firm, which is also Ottawa’s largest brokerage firm based on number of agents, announced Tuesday that it has acquired Ontario-based property management firm 20 VIC. It oversees assets across the country, including four Ottawa properties: Carlingwood Shopping Centre, Billings Bridge Centre and Tower, and 2211 Riverside Dr.
Vancouver average one-bedroom rent dips in August: PadMapper (Business in Vancouver)
The average rent for a one-bedroom Vancouver apartment dipped back down below the $2,000 mark in August, according to PadMapper’s latest data, which takes into account the median rents for all homes that are currently available or vacant and does not include those homes that are already rented out.
The average rent for this home type had jumped past the $2,000 mark last month, reaching $2,090. In August, the median rent for a one-bedroom home fell 4.8% to $1,990. Year-over-year, one-bedroom apartment rents increased 13.7% in the city.
USA
Washingtonville, N.Y.: Reasonably Priced and Diverse (The New York Times)
Compared with Isaac Nicoll, who died in the Battle of Gettysburg and is memorialized with a headstone carved with acanthus leaves in a local cemetery, Linda Standish is a newcomer to Washingtonville in Orange County, N.Y. Born and raised in nearby Monroe, she moved to this hamlet in the town of Blooming Grove with her husband in 1978. The couple paid about $30,000 for a 1909 stone Arts and Crafts-style cottage built by a blacksmith. The three-bedroom house backed up to another character-filled property: the 178-year-old Brotherhood Winery, said to be the oldest operating in the United States.
But compared with almost everyone in town, Ms. Standish, 70, a retired schoolteacher, is an original settler. Washingtonville, a community of 5,800 once surrounded by farmland, has become a magnet for urbanites attracted to its rolling, forested acres and fresh housing developments.
U.S. Home Prices Jump 6.2 Percent in Q2, Eclipse 2016 High (World Property Journal)
According to the latest quarterly report by the National Association of Realtors, the headstrong supply and demand imbalances in much of the United States slightly tempered the pace of sales and caused home prices to maintain their robust growth in the second quarter of 2017.
The national median existing single-family home price in the second quarter was $255,600, which is up 6.2 percent from the second quarter of 2016 ($240,700) and surpasses the third quarter of last year ($241,300) as the new peak quarterly median sales price. The median price during the first quarter increased 6.9 percent from the first quarter of 2016.
Homebuilder sentiment soars on strong sales (CNBC)
U.S. home builders bounced back in August from a recent funk, as current sales and sales expectations leaped forward.
A monthly index of builder sentiment rose 4 points to the highest level since May. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index now stands at 68. Anything above 50 is considered positive sentiment. The index was at 59 last August.
International
UK house price growth slows with London and north-east hardest hit (The Guardian)
Growth in UK house prices rose at a slower pace in June, yet remains close to the 5% average rate seen this year, with the slowest increases coming in London and the north-east.
The average UK house price rose by £2,000 in June to £223,000 compared with the previous month, almost £10,000 higher than a year ago, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). While the annual growth rate has slowed since the middle of last year following the vote to leave the EU, prices are still outstripping increases in inflation and wages, at 4.9% in the year to June, down from 5% in May.
AustralianSuper keen for role in international property lending (The Australian)
The $120 billion AustralianSuper fund could dive into international property lending as banks tighten finance to the real estate sector globally, throwing up opportunities for the fund to lend against ¬office towers, warehouses and shopping centres in developed economies.
AustralianSuper, which has benefited from the surge in local commercial property values and ridden the international real ¬estate boom, buying in the US and Britain in recent years, may also take advantage of the cyclical highs in order to sell some assets.
What Will Hosting the 2028 Olympics Do for Los Angeles’ Reputation? (National Real Estate Investor)
I was proud and excited about the recent announcement that my hometown Los Angeles will be hosting the 2028 Summer Olympic Games. Los Angeles joins Paris and London as the only cities to have hosted an Olympics three times, though Los Angeles will set a milestone as the first city to host twice in the modern era. Los Angeles aspires to share another critical designation with Paris and London – joining the upper echelon of elite global cities.
Los Angeles’s thriving commercial real estate market is leading to robust growth in infrastructure and office space, boosted by an infusion of tech, entertainment and other growing businesses. A decade of preparation for the 2028 Olympics, and the economic influx and added post-event revenue that this will likely bring, should catapult Los Angeles into a higher ranking of dominant world cities.
