Toronto
'Year of the condo' dominates 2017 Toronto luxury market (Toronto Star)
High-end real estate has continued to sell and appreciate while the rest of the Toronto area property market endured a rockier year, says the CEO of Sotheby's International Realty Canada.
Brad Henderson predicted a less choppy year in the real estate market overall for 2018.
Home prices rising faster in the Beach than in many Toronto neighbourhoods (Beach Metro News)
There were few areas of the city where detached home prices rose faster than in the Beach last month.
So suggests the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB)’s latest monthly sales data, released earlier this month.
The benchmark sale price of a detached home in TREB’s E02 Area—which is bounded by Danforth Avenue to the north, Victoria Park Avenue to the east, Lake Ontario to the south, and Coxwell Avenue to the west—was $1,053,900 in December, up 7.88 per cent from the same month in 2016.
Penthouse With Lake Views Leads Record Luxury Condo Sales in Canada (Bloomberg)
A C$20 million ($16 million) penthouse with views of downtown Toronto and Lake Ontario helped luxury condominiums shatter sales records in Canada last year, bucking a cooling trend in the rest of the housing market.
The 7,000-square-foot (650-square-meter) residence in the city’s Bloor Street area was the most expensive condo sold in the country in 2017, according to Sotheby’s International Realty Canada. Sales of condos with a price tag above C$1 million surged 59 percent in Toronto, 27 percent in Vancouver and 49 percent in Montreal, pushing the number of units sold in three cities to 2,703.
Canada
‘It’s on fire’: Montreal home sales growth soars past Toronto, Vancouver for first time in 20 years (Financial Post)
Montreal was one of Canada’s hottest real estate markets last year as low unemployment and economic growth translated into the area’s best sales growth in a decade.
Total sales in the Greater Montreal Area increased eight per cent to 44,448 on the strength of condominium sales and good overall activity on the Island of Montreal.
Canadian real estate market outlook 2018 (MoneySense)
There’s never a dull day in real estate. Last year started off with a big nervous question: Will the Canadian housing market crash? In 2018, the new year started off with more of a sigh. Analysts across North America came out with various pronouncements of deceleration in activity and pricing, but the overwhelming consensus was that the nation’s real estate landscape would flatten out, even in the hot Toronto and Vancouver markets.
It wasn’t too bold of a prediction. Activity was way down in the summer months of 2017, even as the number of listings was finally growing. This prompted only incremental increases in pricing and a nation-wide expectation of a soft-landing for Canada’s property markets.
Condos fuel the strongest year in a decade for Canadian builders (Financial Post)
Last year was a blockbuster for Canada’s real estate developers after work began on the most homes in a decade amid soaring demand nationwide.
Construction started on 219,675 units, according to 2017 data Tuesday from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. That’s up from 197,916 in 2016 and the most since 2007. Starts on multiple-unit projects such as condos hit a record in figures dating to 1955.
USA
U.S. Consumer Spending on Home Remodeling Projects to Uptick in 2018 (World Property Journal)
According to experts at the National Association of Home Builder's International Builders Show in Orlando, Florida, spending on residential remodels will continue to grow at a modest pace in the next two years. Professional remodelers from around the country agreed with the forecast, citing increased consumer confidence.
NAHB predicts that remodeling spending for owner-occupied single-family homes will increase 4.9 percent in 2018 over 2017 and an additional 0.6 percent in 2019.
Sears 'will consider all other options' if refinancing fails, CEO Eddie Lampert warns (USA Today)
Department-store chain Sears Holdings warned Wednesday that it will record a net loss in the fourth quarter after a rough holiday shopping season, as the company continues store closures and cost cuts.
Sears CEO Eddie Lampert said in a blog post that if the company can't refinance certain debt to get more financial breathing room, the company "will consider all other options to maximize the value of Sears Holdings’ assets."
International
Commercial property market in Europe starts 2018 on a positive note (Property Wire)
European commercial property markets have a positive momentum at the start of 2018 with provisional data for 2017 suggesting that investment volumes were higher than in 2016.
If 2017 beats 2016’s total of €216 billion it will still remain some way below the market peak of 2015 when over €250 billion was invested, according to the latest commercial property outlook report from Knight Frank.
