$1M for a tear down in Greek town?

TRANSCRIPT: 

Today is Monday, February 13th. Welcome to The Condo Market This Week. Now, before we jump into the news and what’s happening, just wanted to show you this. I got this cool award this week from, if you could see that there, Milborne Real Estate, top 20 performer for 2016. Yeah, thank you very much Milborne Real Estate for that award. Thank you to all my clients, and friends, family for supporting me to help me get to this point. It’s pretty cool to be recognized by Milborne, because they represent probably as much as 20, 30% of the entire condo market. To be represented in that group is pretty cool. I’m pretty proud of that. Thank you very much Milborne Real Estate.

Let’s jump into the news this week. The first article that I want to look at and point out to you is from The Globe and Mail, demand for downtown condos heats up, is the headline. Talking about how the downtown condo market is particularly hot right now compared to other segments of the market, so the condo market being actually showing signs that it’s hotter than the low rise housing market. The quote here, “According to the latest numbers from the Toronto real estate board, sales in the greater Toronto area market jumped 11.8% in January compared to the same month last year. Condos on the other hand were up 26.7%.”

House is up 11%, condo’s up 26%. Just talking about this is unusual that condos are actually hotter than houses. “Of course if you’re watching these videos, if you’re listening to my podcasts, reading my emails, you know that this is a trend that’s been going on for quite sometime and we are seeing a big shift from the low rise market into the condo market.” Quotes a realtor Geoffrey Grace who is talking about his experiences and basically again highlighting the point that home buyers particularly the entry level home buyers who are in the $600,000 range are now condo buyers. That is a big force drive in the market. That 600-ish thousand dollar range in the condo market is very, very hot right now. It’s a good place to be if you are investing in a condo today is in that segment there.

Okay, the next article is from BuzzBuzzHome. BuzzBuzzHome put out a fantastic piece, getting a lot of shares. You might have seen it already. It’s 13 charts to help you make sense of Canadian real estate craziness in 2017. Great headline there by Josh Sherman in the BuzzBuzzHome. There’s many great charts, definitely encourage you to check this out and look at what’s happening in the housing market in Canada and also in Toronto.

The first chart I just want to highlight to you on this video and that is how downtown Toronto and Vancouver condo prices stack up globally. This is great chart that shows the relative affordability of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal versus other cities around the world. Again, prices have been rising here rapidly, but compared to the rest of the world and compared to just about any other major city in the world, Toronto is still very, very cheap. There’s lots of reason to believe that prices will continue to go up as we are attracting more and more dollars and attention from around the world.

Okay, the next and last article that I want to highlight for you in this week’s video is from The Globe and Mail again. It is a million dollars now buys a tear-down in Toronto’s Greektown. Basically, just highlighting one of the sales that happened just off the Danforth recently in Toronto. What I want to say about this article is basically just bit of a rant. This is one of my pet peeves with journalism around the housing market. This is a very popular recurring headline that we see once a year, twice a year, basically talking about a tear-down house that was sold for a million, or two million, or three million, whatever it might be.

My point is when you see these types of articles, basically all it’s saying is, “This is how much a lot is worth in this area.” A lot is worth about a million dollars in a good area in Central Toronto. That’s really not that particularly newsworthy, or alarming, or it’s not new. We know this to be true. What’s interesting if you look across the GTA, as I have recently in looking for a new house for myself in the past year, is that you find that a million dollars is an entry point for a lot in a good neighborhood anywhere in the GTA, whether it’s a 70-footer in Ajax, a 25-footer on the Danforth, or a 18-footer somewhere maybe in Forest Hill or something if you could find one.

A million dollars is basically, that’s the entry level to get into any good area pretty much anywhere in the GTA. That’s something to consider. Again, it’s just these types of headlines, they bother me a little bit, because they’re just looking for clicks, and looking to generate attention and create alarm, “Wow, a million dollars.” We all know that a million dollars doesn’t buy you much anymore in Toronto certainly. Even if you look across the GTA, if you are looking for a good house in a good area, with a good school, with good access to transit and amenities, the lot value is going to be a million bucks. That’s just the way it is.

You look from Markham, Mississauga, Oakville, Toronto. The size of the lot varies, the type of house that you can get on that lot varies, but it’s going to be a million bucks is a baseline for any good house, good lot, I should say, not even a good house, good lot, good property, and any good neighborhood. All right, so that’s that there. Okay, so there you have it. That’s the news for this week. Until next time. I hope you have a great week and will see you soon.