Toronto’s Tale of Two Markets Is Hot Condos and Cold Houses
Toronto’s Tale of Two Markets Is Hot Condos and Cold Houses
It’s a tale of two housing markets in the Toronto area as Canada’s biggest city gears up for the crucial spring selling season: sales of big detached homes are slow, while condo deals are booming.
On one side are people like Karen Berends, who put her C$1.5 million ($1.2 million) house back on the market in nearby Oakville this month after two failed attempts to sell in the past year. She reduced her asking price by about C$51,000, but still there are no takers, and she’s kicking herself for not cashing out last spring when the market was in a frenzy.
“We could’ve walked away with a really good amount of money in our bank account if we had taken the money last year, but our head wasn’t in it at that point,” Berends said in a phone interview. “It’s been a complete 360 this time around — it’s absolutely dead.”
Then there’s Beth O’Donoghue, a sales representative at Brad J. Lamb Realty Inc., who says the market is as hot as it’s ever been. Her clients recently lost out in three separate condo bidding wars in a week, including one with 11 offers. That’s convinced O’Donoghue, who’s invested in four new condos herself in the city in the past four years, to hold onto her assets for now.
One she bought in pre-construction for C$420,000 and figures she could sell for close to C$700,000. “If you would have told me three years ago when I bought this place that I would’ve made this much money on it already, I would have said you’re crazy,” she said.
Polar Opposites.
After a decade as one of the world’s hottest housing markets, Toronto is moving in two directions. Transactions have certainly cooled since May as the government introduced new rules to tame runaway prices. But the impact has been largely on big, expensive detached homes, with sales plunging 41 percent in February from a year earlier, and prices dropping 12 percent since hitting a record last year. Condo prices, in contrast, soared about 20 percent since last February.
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