When the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) released its April 2017 statistics, a lot of media keyed in on the year-over-year (YoY) increase in new listings and how they "soared" or "jumped": Indeed the overall numbers were up. Some commentators were saying that this was indicating a "flood" of listings as people were rushing to sell their homes and cash out of the market before the bubble burst. I have 3 problems with this, which I'll get to below.... [read more]

Are you curious how your house or condo has appreciated over time compared to the average in the city? Or how those average price increases look versus the stock market? Well then you came to the right place. This is the third time I've compiled these numbers (following Q4 2016 and Q2 2016). I will excerpt some charts in this blog post, but the full report is available here on this website, or as a SlideShare presentation. Please note... [read more]

There have been a bunch of recent stories in the media about how we're now in a buyer's market. I just did a Google search for "Toronto buyer's market" in news, and voila: The year 2016 A.D. will go down as a hot year for Toronto real estate. Year-end average house prices in the 416 were up 22% over the previous December, which was the second highest gain in the last two decades (behind 29% in 2007). Average condo prices were up 16%, the third highest... [read more]

First of all it's important to know what goes into the price of a home. You may be familiar with MPAC (Municipal Property Assessment Corporation). They're the ones that do your property assessments every four years upon which your municipal property taxes are based. They're responsible for assessing and classifying more than 5 million properties so they know a little about home values. According to MPAC, the following 5 factors account for 85% of the value of a house: Show me... [read more]

The MLS® Home Price Index ("HPI") has been emphasized a bit more by the Toronto Real Estate Board ("TREB") recently, and I've been seeing it mentioned in the media a bit more of late. This index is supposed to work like the Consumer Price Index ("CPI") that most are familiar with. The CPI tracks changes in price of a "basket of goods and services," while the HPI tracks a "basket of home attributes." In both cases what's in the basket... [read more]