Canada's 'housing bubble' deemed close to bursting

[SignalHillHiker]

This is an alarming one. A woman bought a small home in the Rabbittown neighbourhood. Turns out it was completely burned black behind the drywall, and a former garage.

It was never inspected by a structural engineer and didn’t even have an occupancy permit, yet the city allowed it be to bought and sold multiple times over the past several decades. And, this being St. John’s, they made the current owner get a structural report and then fined her for the various violations it uncovered.

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/stjohns-buyer-beware

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Denscity

Vancouver with the highest rent in the country according to rentals.ca.

Average 1 bedroom:

Vancouver $2167

Toronto $2013

Victoria $1565

Man. I was watching House Hunters International last night and I saw an episode where a Slovenian couple looked at an absolutely massive 4BR luxury home in the beachy town of Noosa, Australia with a monthly rent of $2,400 US. This thing had to have been over 4,000 SF. It is hard to square Canadian rents with something like that.

[svlt]

Originally Posted by esquire

Man. I was watching House Hunters International last night and I saw an episode where a Slovenian couple looked at an absolutely massive 4BR luxury home in the beachy town of Noosa, Australia with a monthly rent of $2,400 US. This thing had to have been over 4,000 SF. It is hard to square Canadian rents with something like that.

That's a solid 2 hours away from Brisbane, granted most places 2 hours by car away from a city center in Canada look like barren rubble while 2 hours in Australia gets you miles of beautiful coastline.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by svlt

That's a solid 2 hours away from Brisbane, granted most places 2 hours by car away from a city center in Canada look like barren rubble while 2 hours in Australia gets you miles of beautiful coastline.

It wasn't an issue for the Slovenian couple, the man was a radiologist with a job lined up in town and they seemed happy to have more space than in their Ljubljana apartment.

I mean, I love Winnipeg but I suppose I might be able to stomach being away from the Jets and Blue Bombers if it meant this:

[goodgrowth]

Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force Report:

https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/10015...-housing-affordability-task-force-report

The Task Force report’s recommendations include five main areas to quickly increase the supply of market housing, to meet a goal of adding 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years:

Make changes to planning policies and zoning to allow for greater density and increase the variety of housing.

Reduce and streamline urban design rules to lower costs of development.

Depoliticize the approvals process to address NIMBYism and cut red tape to speed up housing.

Prevent abuse of the appeal process and address the backlog at the Ontario Land Tribunal by prioritizing cases that increase housing.

Align efforts between all levels of government to incentivize more housing.

[rofina]

This is a shocker and a milestone for the country;

Toronto's home prices are now more expensive than Vancouver's: report

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/toronto-home-prices-higher-than-vancouver

A new report from RBC found that Toronto’s composite MLS HPI benchmark price reached $1.260 million in January, finally edging out Vancouver’s $1.255 million and making it the most expensive market in Canada for the first time in decades.

Always thought it made sense for Toronto to be the most expensive simply via size and economic importance. But to beat Vancouver at a time where prices are this outrageous is milestone to reach.

[Coldrsx]

Cute.

Canmore, Alberta

Average Sale Price

Detached Homes 2,033,000.00

Townhomes 1,040,400.00

Duplexes 1,484,000.00

Apartments 658,500.00

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

Cute.

Canmore, Alberta

Average Sale Price

Detached Homes 2,033,000.00

Townhomes 1,040,400.00

Duplexes 1,484,000.00

Apartments 658,500.00

Great place to invest in some property!

[lio45]

Sarcasm or not? Because yeah, I'd say that paying $2M for a Canmore house then reselling it for $3M in 2023 after having your personal mail sent there for at least 366 consecutive days, does qualify as a good investment, especially when considered after taxes.

[Coldrsx]

The limited amount of developable land and challenging regulatory/development environment will only compress future supply and exacerbate price escalation.

[yaletown_fella]

Originally Posted by rofina

This is a shocker and a milestone for the country;

Toronto's home prices are now more expensive than Vancouver's: report

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/toronto-home-prices-higher-than-vancouver



Always thought it made sense for Toronto to be the most expensive simply via size and economic importance. But to beat Vancouver at a time where prices are this outrageous is milestone to reach.

Toronto seems to have more of a culture of highly leveraged gen X/millenial amateur "real estate investors" people buying into the bubble and hype built on greater fool theory. TREB is an incredibly powerful organization, and newspapers are afraid to offend one of the 1 million licensed realtors in the city [a big portion of their readership/subscribers/listenership etc] by speaking critically of the industry or calling it what it is; so they pretend that a condo in "downtown Markham" is a phenomenal investment that you can either hold, "flip" or sell in 3 years for a huge profit.

The number of 1 bedroom + den unit being advertised as 2 bedrooms , with tiny unusable "european" cubbyhole kitchens along one wall, is insane.

It's very similar to how journalists in financial newspapers and TV stations are not willing to call out cryptocurrency for being a purely speculative bubble based on greater fool theory. The only people who are making any money with crypto are the insiders who bought early, created hype to entice new investors, and are now beginning to dump and crystalize their crypto for fiat currency. Most people who bought crypto this year have lost money! They are the bag holders. The difference is , crypto is not a store of value like gold or real estate.

Not to mention the fact that almost 100% of so-called experts given airtime on TV or newspaper columns in financial sections of newspapers are keynesians. So theyll never tell you the dirty secret about the source of this boom, and that it's actually a bubble.

Just looking at the sheer number of full and part time lisenced realtors in the GTA, proves we are in a huge bubble. The areas close to subway lines will continue to go for a premium as people continue to immigrate here for opportunity [although I suspect this is overstated long term, especially as so-called second world countries will catch up with our standard as living as the USD inevitably loses its status as the worlds reserve currency] , but the notion that a condo in Downtown Markham is worth $600,000 and can command $2000 a month in rent; $200 less than a 1 bedroom condo in Yaletown Vancouver is insane.

/endrant

[urbandreamer]

^I've realized the only real property I'll own (actually own it now) is my burial plot.

[Al Ski]

Originally Posted by lio45

Sarcasm or not? Because yeah, I'd say that paying $2M for a Canmore house then reselling it for $3M in 2023 after having your personal mail sent there for at least 366 consecutive days, does qualify as a good investment, especially when considered after taxes.

Hey! Don't let rising interest rates and the coming recession stop you..

Buy at the top!

Good god don't listen to this clown..

[casper]

Originally Posted by rofina

This is a shocker and a milestone for the country;

Toronto's home prices are now more expensive than Vancouver's: report

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/toronto-home-prices-higher-than-vancouver



Always thought it made sense for Toronto to be the most expensive simply via size and economic importance. But to beat Vancouver at a time where prices are this outrageous is milestone to reach.

Size? Ok. hard to dispute that. Stats etc.

Economic Importance. No. Toronto economic importance is over rated. As we all know enlightened corporations are all moving their head offices to Alberta for lower taxes. Those looking for a better quality of life for their HQ employees are all moving to Vancouver. Those that are cheap and not overly ambitious are moving west to Mississauga.

Not surprised Toronto is catching up to Vancouver in housing costs. That is where the population growth is for new immigrants. What is going to be interesting is seeing the long term demographics. Families settle in Canada in the big city. Many people who grow up the two big cities start looking at the smaller cities in Canada to settle into when it is time for them to have families. This is going to be interesting to follow over the next few decades.

[goodgrowth]

Developers can't keep getting away with this!...

[TownGuy]

Originally Posted by svlt

That's a solid 2 hours away from Brisbane, granted most places 2 hours by car away from a city center in Canada look like barren rubble while 2 hours in Australia gets you miles of beautiful coastline.

Strange comment. Where in Canada would 2 hours away from a city centre have you in barren rubble?

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Al Ski

Hey! Don't let rising interest rates and the coming recession stop you..

Buy at the top!

Good god don't listen to this clown..

I'm not advising buying a multimillion cookie-cutter SFH, I'm just pointing out it's been a good investment most of the time for the past ~15 years.

Similarly, my personal advice if you'd asked me whether you should have bought a ton of bitcoin back when it was at ~$10,000 would have been "hard pass".

Yet, people made a lot of money that way. Just too risky for me--as it's not backed up by, say, a reliable decent ROI, or a historically solid guarantee of value (like, say, gold). (Both the BTC and the Welland/Canmore detached SFH at current prices qualify as buying, in good part, hot air.)

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by TownGuy

Strange comment. Where in Canada would 2 hours away from a city centre have you in barren rubble?

Newfoundout, Ontario, an abandoned farming village (so barren rubble), surrounded by a huge swath of more or less barren wilderness, is a lot less than a 2 hour drive from downtown Ottawa.

[Coldrsx]

B.C. prepares to remove some housing approval powers from local governments: minister
Housing minister David Eby says "municipalities are not approving enough housing for our population growth" as too many development proposals become stalled at the permit approval stage

Author of the article:The Canadian Press
The Canadian Press
Dirk Meissner
Publishing date:Feb 21, 2022

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news...sing-approval-powers-from-municipalities

[ssiguy]

^^ Good.

Our cities have shown themselves to be completely incompetent when it comes to providing permits. If a building conforms to the current city planning regulations, the approval should be automatic.