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]

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) is supposed to act like the more familiar Consumer Price Index (CPI). While the CPI tracks the price of a basket of goods, the HPI tracks the price of a basket of house attributes. For a more detailed look into how the HPI works, check out this blog post. Similar to the monthly Toronto real estate market charts, the full set of HPI charts (with the charts much larger and more legible) are available as a SlideShare report The HPI isn't... [read more]

I received the new Toronto Life in my mailbox yesterday. I'm sure you'll see more online about this soon, as they tend to bleed the magazine's content out over the course of the month. (Update: story is now posted). So of course I read the Next Hot Neighbourhoods cover story with interest. In prior years they did a "Where To Buy Now" and it was typically 10 neighourhoods in the 416 (12 in 2015). This year they have expanded it to 20... [read more]