■Sold Over Asking_1 Lakehill Cres

1 Lakehill Cres sold over asking within 1 day after being on the market! This 4+1 property has seasonal views of lake and parkland with in ground salt water pool. Rare offering in Cliffcrest neighbourhood! Listing price was 1.1 mil.

Sold: $1.175,000

■This Month in Real Estate | February 2015

■Property on The Move

It’s a truism in Silicon Valley that technological disruption creates business value. Yet as many failed startups can attest, disruption does not automatically translate into success. Timing matters as much as disruption itself: many dotcom-bubble-era companies that went bankrupt, from grocery delivery to pet services, are today thriving businesses in different forms. Put simply, the right technology must combine with the right behaviour, sufficient scale and the right economics, at the right moment. In America’s property sector, that moment is now. As a ­result, in the coming year the industry will start assuming the shape it will take for the next decade, and a cascade of innovation should follow.


Property has value, but until recently the information that lets consumers understand and capture that value remained fragmented and opaque. With the surge in mobile technology, the increasing sophistication of big-data analytics and processing, and the beginnings of a new breed of property business, change is now happening. Millions of people are easily able to view information about homes, commutes and neighbourhoods, and over the past year most consumer engagement with the leading real-estate sites has started taking place on mobile platforms.

The property industry will have to respond to all this. Three big shifts are in prospect. First, we’re going to see completely different participants in the market on both sides of the transaction. A new generation of buyers and renters is already influencing the way people search for properties. They are more connected to mobile technology than even the early adopters of the past ten years. With 92% of consumers using the internet as part of their property search, the pervasiveness of mobile technology, with its extra dimensions of location and immediacy, will create new and valuable experiences. Starting in 2015, a new generation of brokers and agents will join the industry as well. They too will be attuned to the fact that mobile technology is essential to running their business.

Second, we’re going to see faster, less anxious, more informed decision-making. After years of research and experience, we know that buying a home is not just the largest financial decision most people make. It is also one of their lengthiest and most doubt-filled financial transactions. The decision to make a piece of property a home will always be unique to every person. But over the next decade more and more buyers and sellers will accept that they can quickly eliminate many of the adjacent uncertainties around that decision (regarding schools, crime, commutes, neighbourhoods, local services), thanks to the spread of online and mobile tools.

Eventually, this means that what we call the “messy middle”—the period between the waning of the buyer’s initial enthusiasm for a property and the moment they feel ready to buy it—will shrink. The average purchase cycle for a home is now 18-24 months. It will start to become shorter in 2015 and get closer to 12 months, or even less, over the next five years.

Third, as basic property information becomes ubiquitous, so service and branding will become essential differentiators for companies in the industry. You already see this in markets such as Britain and Australia.With home-buyers younger, tech-savvier, better informed and more decisive, real-estate professionals will get more creative in how they manage their relationships, provide insights and guide people through the process. The importance of personal attention and service remains paramount in property, so expect to see more agents investing time in building a comprehensive online presence, through increased use of social media and maintenance of detailed agent profiles, where they can demonstrate their experience and expertise to people everywhere, not just those they know in the neighbourhood. This emphasis on transparency should improve the level of service the industry offers.

Ripe for innovation
I have always believed that property—more than any other sector dependent on technology—needs to be treated as a two-sided marketplace. Because of the size and complexity of the transactions, the best real-estate technology, rather than eliminating the intermediary, should actually strengthen the role of professionals working in the industry, as well as improving the consumer experience. But this assumes that the professionals understand they are now fully exposed to a demanding consumer marketplace. The time is ripe for that understanding to bear fruit. Experts expect the housing market in 2015—both in the United States and globally—to see an increasing number of homes listed for sale and modestly growing demand. If so, the stable recovery is the perfect time for the industry to take risks in a connected marketplace that has finally achieved critical mass.

By: Pete Flint, chief executive, Trulia
Source: The Economist From The World In 2015 print edition

■Market Watch-February, 2015

Strong Start to 2015

February 4, 2015 -- Toronto Real Estate Board President Paul Etherington announced a strong start to 2015, with robust year-over-year sales and average price growth in January. Greater Toronto Area REALTORS® reported 4,355 home sales through the TorontoMLS system during the first month of the year. This result represented a 6.1 per cent increase over January 2014. During the same period, new listings were up by 9.5 per cent.

"The January results represented good news on multiple fronts. First, strong sales growth suggests home buyers continue to see housing as a quality long-term investment, despite the recent period of economic uncertainty. Second, the fact that new listings grew at a faster pace than sales suggests that it has become easier for some people to find a home that meets their needs," said Mr. Etherington.

The average selling price for January 2015 home sales was up by 4.9 per cent year-over -year to $552,575. The MLS® Home Price Index (HPI) Composite benchmark was up by 7.5 percent compared to January 2014.

"Home price growth is forecast to continue in 2015. Lower borrowing costs will largely mitigate price growth this year, which means affordability will remain in check. The strongest rates of price growth will be experienced for low-rise home types, including singles, semis and town houses. However, robust end-user demand for condo apartments will result in above-inflation price growth in the high-rise segment as well," said Jason Mercer, TREB's Director of Market Analysis.

Source: www.torontorealestateboard.com

■The Return of The Larger Condo

Two-bedroom units make a come back as developers eye live-in buyers rather than investors.



The black billboard in front of the old Dip ’n Sip Donut shop at Kingston Rd. and Main St. is a sign of the times — in more ways than one. It’s there to advertise that, yes, another condo is going up, and another eclectic piece of Toronto history is coming down. But it’s also a sign that change is coming to the condo industry.

Sometime next year, a bulldozer will be brought in and the aged diner, which had seen better days 20 years ago, will be razed. In its place will go the next generation of condos. They will be less shoe boxes in the sky aimed at investors, and more permanent homes aimed at so-called “end users” — young families, folks looking for the conveniences of turn-key living, baby boomers looking to downsize in the same neighbourhoods where they raised their kids.

Streetcar Developments, better known for the kind of ubiquitous, boxy, glass-walled suites that now dominate Toronto’s skyline, is moving to the next stage. Its newest project, The Southwood, will have just 45 units, most of them “family-sized suites” in a six-storey building with all the comforts of home (minus the upkeep), including outdoor space.

All the units will have balconies or terraces and more home-like amenities, such as gas stoves. Bigger units will have kitchen islands made for great gatherings. And there’s even a debate about whether to make a daycare centre part of the second phase, planned down the road and across the street, just steps from the Kingston Rd. TTC tracks. Streetcar is far from alone.

Developers across the GTA are now doing a major rethink, and a retooling, with a host of projects that will feature fewer tiny units and more spaces where people can really live. But they will come at a price — in Streetcar’s case, $600,000 and up.

“The biggest change in the condo market now is the bigger appetite for bigger homes for end users,” says Jim Ritchie, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Tridel, Canada’s largest condominium developer.

“As expensive as condominiums may be seen to be, when you look at alternatives — like houses — they are still less expensive.” Tridel, like Streetcar, has new projects in the sales or development stages for 2015 that are turning conventional condo thinking on its ear. Tridel was surprised when sales launched in the summer of 2013 for its 362-unitAqualina Bayside project on Queen’s Quay. The company found that the units in highest demand were some of the biggest and most pricey.

Those units are typically the last to sell, which is why developers have flooded the condo market with so many one-bedrooms and even micro-condos up to 500 square feet. They have been hugely popular with investors looking to buy a unit and rent it out. In fact, of the 100 units in Aqualina that sold for over $500,000, 31 of them were over $1 million and about 1,500 square feet. As a result, Tridel stepped up the number of bigger units in the second phase of Bayside, called Aquavista. Bigger units will account for almost one-quarter of the 227 total suites. Sales just launched in November, but already end users have snapped up 25 of the $1 million-plus bigger units, says Ritchie.

“We also have a lot in the $800,000 and $900,000 price range, and we have some one-bedroom units. But our focus is really on two bedrooms and larger,” says Ritchie. “We’re seeing more of this demand from end users, and not all of it in the downtown.”

In many ways, this is an overdue correction in a condo market that had gotten out of whack. Over the last five years in particular, unit sizes have been shrinking. Part of that has been a legitimate effort by developers to keep prices below $450,000 in the face of escalating land and development costs: Above that, buyers lose most HST rebates. But small condos also fed intense investor demand, which remains surprisingly strong but has eased from its 2011 peak.

In 2009, for instance, condo projects launched in the GTA had units averaging 929 square feet. By this year, new GTA projects launching sales had lost the equivalent of a bedroom and hit a low averaging 812 square feet, according to RealNet research. The loss of living space has been even more pronounced in the popular downtown core. But already, unit sizes are starting to creep back up, says RealNet president George Carras.

The down side, however, is that average prices will also climb as units get bigger – and that’s worrisome given that the average cost of a new condo has already reached $455,000 as of this fall, not including monthly maintenance fees, according to RealNet.

Part of that is because new-build houses and condos are subject to the HST, where resale home aren’t. The $600,000 price tag for one of Streetcar’s The Southwood condos, for instance, includes $54,000 just in HST.

“That acts as a really negative influence for developers looking to build bigger units,” says Streetcar Development founder Les Mallins.

Since 2004, the mix of condos coming on the market has changed dramatically, RealNet research shows: Back then, some 47 per cent of the units in new project launches were two bedrooms. One-bedrooms accounted for about 41 per cent of all new unit launches.

But as land and other costs escalated, the mix shifted dramatically. At the peak in 2011, one bedrooms made up about 61 per cent of all new launches and two bedrooms just 31 per cent. As of the end of this year, with developers looking to build bigger, the mix is returning to 2004 levels, with one bedrooms making up 48 per cent of new launches and two-bedrooms catching up at 41 per cent.

By: Susan Pigg

Source: www.thestar.com/business/2014/12/28/the_return_of_the_larger_condo.html

■CIBC expects another rate cut in March despite weak loonie

A forecast from CIBC World Markets predicts that the bank of Canada will make a further 0.25 per cent cut to interest rates in March despite the current weakness of the Canadian dollar. Chief economist Avery Shenfield says that growth will be lower than 2 per cent this year and sees the loonie falling to 77 cents US and not recovering too much above 80 cents US. Avery notes that there is a need to shift economic growth from housing and debt to exports in spite of the weak oil prices and also that the US is likely to increase its interest rates in the summer, putting additional pressure on the Canadian dollar. There is also a possibility that the BoC will take even more action later in the year: “While that second cut is priced in, markets may then guess about a third" Avery says but with CIBC expecting a recovering oil price by the end of the year it is also forecasting a “reversal of the Bank of Canada’s rate cuts in 2016.”

by Jamie Henry 

Source: http://www.mortgagebrokernews.ca/news/cibc-expects-another-rate-cut-in-march-despite-weak-loonie-187647.aspx

■RBC cuts mortgage rate, price war coming?

It was always going to happen but while last week the big lenders were reluctant to pass on the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cut to borrowers, this week there’s talk of a price war.

Royal Bank of Canada has become the first of the big banks to cut mortgage rates, dropping its 5-year fixed rate deal to 2.84 per cent and also cutting its other fixed products. Flexible rates are unchanged though along with other lending from the bank. Of course these rates are their published deals and brokers frequently secure better ones but a ‘battle of the rates’ creating headlines can only help the perception that now is a great time to buy. How low those rates go is anybody’s guess but there are already predictions of sub-2 per cent mortgages.

by Jamie Henry  



Source: http://www.mortgagebrokernews.ca/news/rbc-cuts-mortgage-rate-price-war-coming-187518.aspx