RED TAPE – NOT GREEDY COMPANIES – IS THE REAL CAUSE OF CANADA’S HOUSING CRISIS
As Canada begins to emerge from the COVID-19 recession and our cities come back to life, there’s a certain dread lingering in the background for those looking for a place to call home. While it’s nice to see people enjoying life again, it’s clear by now that urban housing markets are tightening again. In June, rental prices increased in Toronto, most of the GTA, Vancouver and British Columbia’s Lower Mainland. And according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, average sale prices for the...
read moreIT LOOKS LIKE A VACANT HOME TAX IS COMING TO TORONTO SOONER RATHER THAN LATER
The City of Toronto has been mulling over the idea of a vacant home tax to help free up hoarded housing supply for years, and now that council has formally suggested and also approved the move, it looks like it’s going to be coming into effect sooner than investors might be ready for. According to council, such a tax on tens of thousands of empty condos and houses could be in place by as soon as Jan. 1, 2022, with the city now preparing to move into a public consultation stage...
read moreONTARIO MOVING TO STEP TWO OF ROADMAP TO REOPEN ON JUNE 30
With key public health and health care indicators continuing to improve, the provincewide vaccination rate now surpassing the targets outlined in the province’s Roadmap to Reopen, and on the recommendation of the the Chief Medical Officer of Health, the Ontario government is moving the province into Step Two of its Roadmap to Reopen at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, June 30, 2021. “Because of the tireless work of our health care heroes, and the record setting success of our vaccine rollout, we are...
read moreHERE ARE CANADA’S MOST & LEAST AFFORDABLE CITIES TO RENT IN RIGHT NOW
Rental prices in Canada range from super affordable to wildly pricey and a new report by Rentals.ca has rounded up the average prices in 35 different Canadian cities. The first on the list and the most expensive is Vancouver, followed by Toronto. In fact, the 10 least affordable cities are all within Ontario and B.C. Here’s what it costs on average to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Canada’s most expensive cities: Vancouver, BC: $1,981 Toronto, ON: $1,833 Markham, ON: $1,796...
read moreCONDO DEVELOPER PLANS TO BUY $1 BILLION WORTH OF SINGLE-FAMILY HOUSES IN CANADA FOR RENTALS
A Toronto condo developer is buying hundreds of detached houses in Ontario, with the plan of renting them and profiting on the housing crisis ripping across the country. Core Development Group Ltd. is building a large-scale single-family home rental operation, an unproven business model in Canada, where the market is fragmented and individual investors lease a small number of their own properties for income. Institutional house rentals have become highly lucrative in the United States, with...
read moreCANADA’S HOUSING MARKET IS OUT OF CONTROL
The Canadian housing market is out of control. Over the past two years, total sales have increased by an incredible 76 percent. Statistics from April show that property prices went up by 42 percent when compared with the same period last year. This trend of property inflation has continued despite the financial turmoil caused by the pandemic. The rapid increase of Canada’s house prices has meant that the cost of rents has dramatically outpaced wages. Across the country, tenants have fought...
read moreFIRST RENTAL RULE ‘ENFORCER’ SELDOM NEEDS HIS NIGHTSTICK
When former Victoria police superintendent Scott McGregor was hired in May 2019 to lead the first compliance and enforcement unit for B.C.’s often contentious Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB), he was referred to as the “enforcer” by Housing Minister Selina Robinson. But, after two years on the job, McGregor says he was surprised at the level of co-operation among landlords and tenants, even when Canada’s toughest rental regulations were ushered in with COVID-19 in 2020. McGregor’s years of...
read moreFINESSING THE FINANCIALS KEY TO PARKDALE LAND TRUST DEAL
Up until mid-April, residents at 22 Maynard Ave. in Toronto’s rapidly gentrifying Parkdale neighbourhood worried about where they would live when their landlords sold the building. But when a community land trust purchased the 36-unit, affordable rental property, residents breathed a sigh of relief. “When you take the element of fear of a bad landlord away, when you try to work with affordable rents, when a unit is maintained, when a relationship isn’t acrimonious – because they shouldn’t be,...
read morePROPERTY/CASUALTY INSURANCE MARKET UPDATE
As you know, I like to “bore” my friends and clients with an occasional update on the insurance market so that, as customers of that industry, you have some idea of where it is going and why it is behaving the way it is. This current update is “brought to you by Lloyds of London”, the largest insurance provider in the world, having been around for over 300 years, since 1686. The impact that Lloyds has on the world’s insurance business is not to be underestimated. Not only is it the place to...
read moreMONTREAL IS GETTING $100M TO RENOVATE OVER 500 LOW-RENTAL HOUSING UNITS
Montreal has been granted $100 million to renovate more than 500 low-rental housing units (LRH) across the island. In a Wednesday afternoon press release, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation announced the deal. In collaboration with the Quebec and Canadian government, the Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal (OMHM) says 517 units will be renovated, several of which are “currently boarded up.” Depending on the scope of the renovations required in the various buildings, the work...
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