Toronto
Cabbagetown daycare proposal refused at city hall over traffic concerns (Toronto Star)
A recent proposal to alter minor zoning rules and allow Cabbagetown residents a new daycare has been denied. Opponents to the change cited intolerable daytime noise, traffic jams, jungle gyms and pastel colours.
Twitter critics highlight casualties of Toronto’s slow real estate market (Globe and Mail)
As the Greater Toronto Area housing market continues to show slow sales volumes and declining values for some home types, the pressing question asks: how brutal was the price correction of 2017? Twitter users are now fond of tweeting the real estate equivalent of car crash scenes that highlight recent transactions, which resulted in multi-hundred-thousand-dollar losses in a single year.
Judge Warns GTA Real Estate Market ‘Not For The Faint Of Heart’ (Toronto Storeys)
Yixing Hu and David Lea were looking to buy a home, got sucked into a bidding war, won it, had to back out. Now they have been ordered by the Ontario Supreme Court to pay the sellers $470,000 — even though they didn’t end up buying the home.
Canada
Affordable Housing In Canada In Crisis As Rental Rates Climb, Supply Dwindles (Huffington Post)
Renters across Canada are reporting evictions in bad faith, with landlords claiming they will be living in the unit themselves, only to upgrade and list the unit at twice the rent months later. Added to that, there are claims that developers do not have enough incentive to create projects for mid-range and modest income families.
Canadian home prices flat in March as Toronto market pauses (Business News Network)
Canadian home prices went unchanged in March. While the closely-watched Toronto market showed signs of stabilizing, prices in Vancouver climbed to a new high.
Cryptocurrency touted as gateway to deeper buyer pool (Canadian Real Estate Magazine)
While still a novel idea, selling properties for Bitcoin is being touted as a way to reach more international buyers, many of whom are constrained by caps on capital outflow. Derryn Shrosbree, who last month sold a Mississauga condo for Bitcoin — the first transaction of its kind in Canada — is at it again. This time selling a 2,550-square-foot single-family detached home in Halifax.
United States
Man tries to woo Taylor Swift by robbing bank and throwing loot over her fence (Guardian)
Police say a Connecticut man with a crush on singer Taylor Swift robbed a bank and then went to the pop star’s Rhode Island mansion, where he threw cash over a fence in an attempt to impress her.
Blac Chyna’s dream house includes a sex room (Page Six)
Chyna has teamed up with Michael Lehrer of Lehrer Architects in Los Angeles to design what she’d imagine in her dream home. Her requests included an infinity pool, a 10-car garage, a Blac Chyna topiary and a helicopter pad — as well as a something a tad more unorthodox: a sex room.
Record 64 Million Americans Now Live in Multigenerational Households (World Property Journal)
The number and share of Americans living in multigenerational households increased sharply during and immediately after the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Since then, growth has slowed a little but has remained much more rapid since then before and has now reached record numbers.
International
Who Benefits From The Fierce Airbnb, Booking.com Rivalry (Forbes)
The hospitality industry is going through a profound change in recent years. The "vacation apartments" market has grown tremendously; yet, we don’t see hotels closing their doors. In fact, cities around the world are putting regulation spokes in the wheels of online hospitality service marketplaces such as Airbnb.
The World's Hottest Property Markets [Infographic] (Forbes)
Anybody who decided to invest in an apartment in Berlin around the turn of the century will probably be sitting on a small fortune by now.
Global Housing Markets Are ‘Slowing Sharply.’ Is Canada Next? (Huffington Post)
A majority of the world's housing markets are seeing slowing momentum, and Canada could soon be among them.
