Frank Steinhausen, Broker
FSteinhausen@REMAX.net
RE/MAX Rouge River Realty Ltd., Brokerage
Phone 905-428-6533
Fax 905-668-1850
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Archive for the 'Durham Region' Category
GTA Resale Housing Stable in July
August 7th, 2008 Categories: Ajax, Buying real estate, Durham Region, Pickering, Pickering Village, Real Estate News, Selling real estate
TORONTO, August 6, 2008 — With 7,806 transactions recorded last month, the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) resale housing market continued at a moderate pace in July, Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) President Maureen O’Neill announced today.
Prices remained stable throughout the GTA in July. At $371,427 the average price increased slightly more than one per cent from $366,012 recorded in July 2007 and nine per cent from the $342,034 figure of two years ago.
In the City of Toronto the average price of $395,342 increased less than one per cent from the July 2007 price of $395,044 and 10 per cent from the July 2006 figure of $360,409.
In the 905 Region the average price increased three per cent to $355,401 compared to the July 2007 figure of $345,967. This also represents an eight per cent increase from the July 2006 average of $329,644.
“Sales declined 12 per cent last month from the best-ever July 2007 record of 8,912 but increased 10 per cent from the 7,082 sales transacted in July 2006,” said Ms. O’Neill. “Comparing July 2007 with July 2006, sales increased by 26 per cent.”
In the City of Toronto 3,132 sales were recorded, down 14 per cent from July 2007’s 3,640 transactions but up 10 per cent from the 2,852 sales recorded two years ago in 2006. Comparing July 2007 with July 2006, a period before the Land Transfer tax went into effect in Toronto, sales increased 28 per cent.
In the 905 Region there were 4,674 transactions, down 11 per cent from July 2007’s 5,272 sales but up 10 per cent from the 4,230 sales recorded in July 2006. Comparing July 2007 with July 2006, sales increased 25 per cent.
From a year-to-date perspective, the GTA’s 51,249 sales in 2008 have declined 14 per cent from the 59,339 reached at this time a year ago.
Certain neighbourhoods throughout the GTA experienced increased sales activity in July.
In Whitby (E15) sales increased 22 per cent from July 2007, based on strong sales in most housing types.
Brampton East (W24) saw a 12 per cent increase, based primarily on semi-detached home sales.
Strong detached home sales drove Uxbridge (N16) to a 23 per cent increase compared to a year ago.
The Annex (C02) experienced a 29 per cent sales increase due to strong detached home and condominium apartment sales.
In addition to stable prices, the list to sale price ratio, at 98 per cent, remains unchanged from a year ago.
“While homeowners continue to see healthy returns, it is taking slightly longer to achieve a sale; the average time on market has increased to 33 days compared to 31 days a year ago,” said Ms. O’Neill. “This may be due to that fact that there is now more choice available to homebuyers; there are currently 26,543 active listings, a 28 per cent increase from a year ago.”
Greater Toronto REALTORS® are passionate about their work. They adhere to a strict Code of Ethics and share a state-of-the-art Multiple Listing Service. Serving over 28,000 Members in the Greater Toronto Area, the Toronto Real Estate Board is Canada’s largest real estate board. Greater Toronto Area open house listings are now available on www.TorontoRealEstateBoard.com.
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Steady GTA Resale Housing Market in May
June 4th, 2008 Categories: Ajax, Buying real estate, Durham Region, Pickering, Pickering Village, Selling real estate
TORONTO, June 4, 2008 — The Greater Toronto Area resale housing market recorded 9,411 transactions in May, Toronto Real Estate Board President Maureen O’Neill announced today.
On a year-over-year basis the GTA average price increased four per cent to $398,148 in May from the May 2007 average of $382,787. Prices increased three per cent in the City of Toronto to $434,271 from $422,163 during the same period a year ago, while in the 905 Region there was a five per cent increase to $374,629 from $355,341 last May.
“Price gains show that real estate continues to be a solid investment for the consumer,” said Ms. O’Neill. “We are confident about the market because employment in the GTA continues to be strong and interest rates remain low. As long as consumers have the financial resources to buy homes and a variety of choices to manage carrying costs, the market should remain stable.”
“May’s sales figures represent a 16 per cent decline in the GTA from the record month a year ago when 11,146 sales were recorded,” said Ms. O’Neill. “More than 9,000 properties changing hands still represents considerable market activity.”
In the City of Toronto, there were 3,711 sales, down 19 per cent from last May’s 4,578 sales and down 6 per cent from May 2006. In the 905 Region, 5,700 transactions were recorded, which represents a 13 per cent decline from the 6,568 sales during the same period a year ago but up 4 per cent from May 2006.
“The Toronto Land Transfer Tax has been in effect for four months and the decline in sales has been running for the same time period,” said Ms. O’Neill. “We’re keeping a close watch on the effect of this new tax.”
Two specific areas North of Toronto experienced increased sales activity in May. In Uxbridge (N16) sales were up 10 per cent, while Stouffville (N12) saw a 12 per cent increase in sales, driven mainly by detached home transactions.
Toronto REALTORS® are passionate about their work. They adhere to a strict code of ethics and share a state-ofthe-art Multiple Listing Service. Serving over 27,000 Members in the Greater Toronto Area, the Toronto Real Estate Board is Canada’s largest real estate board. Greater Toronto Area open house listings are now available on www.TorontoRealEstateBoard.com.
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Real Estate Implications with GM Plant Closing
June 4th, 2008 Categories: Durham Region, Real Estate News, Selling real estate
No one likes to hear about job loses, especially close to home. As a resident of Durham Region, hearing about the Oshawa truck plant closure makes me wonder how the region is going to attract and keep jobs. As I showed in my post, Too Much Information: Municipal Tax Calculator for Your Durham Home, Durham Region already has a shaky industrial tax base causing property taxes to be higher than most regions in the Greater Toronto Area.
I am wondering if the region is going to jump on the airport band wagon again. Having an airport might attract some business out this way. I am afraid that the regional councillors will be short-sighted in settling on the airport answer instead of looking for solutions that can answer the concerns over the long term. Like checking out the opportunities of increasing the creative class that Richard Florida refers to in his book, Who’s Your City?; or investigating how other international cities have moved from an industrial/manufacturing base to a thriving community in another arena.
Thriving communities are what keep real estate values going up. Prices will stabilize if the demand slows. With this happening, Durham Region is still the best priced homes close to the GTA. In no other area can you buy a detached home for under $300,000 and still be able to walk to Lake Ontario or be in downtown Toronto in 20 minutes.
I hope that the regional and city councillors take some time to think about what is best for our community over the long term. And I hope that the auto workers don’t strike because that might just be what GM wants—to close the plant sooner rather than later.
Check out the article, Truck plant closing means Durham can’t depend on GM
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Don’t Want to Pay Development Charges? Buy a Resale Home
May 23rd, 2008 Categories: Buying real estate, Durham Region, Real Estate
Recently there was an article in the News Advertiser that suggested that Durham Region was impacting house affordability because it charges a substantial amount to new home builders to cover the costs of putting in the services to the new homes being built. The development charges and taxes have now risen to about 20% of the new home price.
The developers are complaining. I would be complaining if the region had to put the cost of the new roads and sewers and sidewalks on to my tax bill instead of the developers. Someone has to pay.
Fast forward two to ten years, the development charges and taxes were paid by the new home buyer. They probably put up a fence; added some decorating details; maybe finished the basement. And now you get to buy it.
You don’t have to pay for any of that. They put $50,000 into their basement and you pay about 75% of that value. And they will probably throw in the appliances because they want to buy new ones for their new home.
Real estate agents have been shouting from the rooftops that buying a resale home has benefits, in spades, over buying new. For example:
- New home fix-ups that are often needed after the home settles, like nail-pops or cabinets shifting, has been completed.
- Fences are put up.
- Basements are finished.
- Appliances are often included.
- Light fixtures are often upgraded.
- Blinds and drapes are often included.
- Decorating details have been added to personalize the home.
- Landscaping has been done.
- Driveway paved.
- The development is winding down so the dust has settled.
Convinced. With new home starts down, and resale listings on the rise. Now might be the time to move up.
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Is A Long Term Mortgage the Best Option for First Time Home Buyers?
May 18th, 2008 Categories: Buying real estate, Durham Region, Mortgage, Real Estate News
It is nice to get confirmation of your opinion from the press. The National Post published an article on long-term mortgages that echoes the post where I urged first time buyers to be cautious.
The article referenced a report from Re/Max Ontario-Atlantic, stating:
“Innovative financing” is now the key to home ownership in today’s environment, the report said, with longer amortization periods being used by 62% of first-time buyers. Low or no down payments were popular with 38% of surveyed buyers, it added.
While that may conjure comparisons with loose lending standards in the American subprime-ravaged housing market, Michael Polzler, Re/ Max’s Ontario-Atlantic regional director, said mortgage qualifications remain tougher in Canada.
“If the client is perceived of being a risk in Canada, it’s much harder to get this type of financing,” he said. “A 40-year mortgage allows them to jump into the game and capitalize on home-price gains.”
Adrian Mastracci, a Vancouver-based portfolio manager with KCM Wealth Management, referred to such mortgages as the “Freedom 95″ plan, in reference to the Freedom 55 retirement plan once popularized by London Life.
“The banks will love you because you’re going to be paying for life,” Mr. Mastracci says. If people don’t speed up repayments on such debt, they will find themselves paying it off well into their senior years, he adds.
“With a 40-year mortgage, you’re not buying, you’re just leasing long-term,” and will spend the first 30 years making mostly interest payments.
Caution is a word that Canadians take to heart. Real estate is still a great investment opportunity. Get all the facts you need to make a good decision.
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Market News for Resale Homes in Pickering Village
May 12th, 2008 Categories: Buying real estate, Durham Region, Pickering Village, Real Estate News, Selling real estate
Reports of the approaching end of the housing boom tell us very little about how our local market is fairing. In short, the sky is not falling in the housing market in Pickering Village.
In the Eagle Ridge area of Pickering Village, there were 20 home sales in the month of April. Of those 16 were detached homes. The highest priced home sold for $560,000 and the lowest sale was $236,000. One home sold for over its list price by 102%. Most sold close to their final list price to the tune of 98%.
The average length of time it took to sell the homes was 35 days. There were a couple of slow list-to-sale homes, in the higher price ranges that extended the average up. The median time to sale was 23.5 days.
Want to know how your street or neighbourhood is doing. I can give you the lowdown.
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What We Can Learn From the U.S. Mortgage Fallout
April 25th, 2008 Categories: Area interest, Durham Region, Mortgage, Real Estate, Real Estate News
U.S. President George Bush recently announced a stop-gap (albeit limited) 
measure that may assist many U.S. homeowners from experiencing what millions already have – losing their homes. In light of the dilemma south of the border, what can we Canadians learn from all this, and how can we be better prepared to avoid similar devastating effects?
A brief history of U.S. home lending practices: it all started when credit was provided early in the 20th century after the Great Depression. Lenders first offered simple interest 80/20 short-term loans; 80 per cent down and 20 per cent financing. Then some ingenious private entrepreneurs and banks decided they could charge more interest by providing 50/50 loans over longer periods. They saw the opportunity to really make large returns on their investments. 50/50 soon became 80/20, with 20 per cent down and 80 per cent financed. After lobbyists pressed Congress, they eventually passed a law approving compound interest, not long after the Second World War when all the vets returned home.
Amortization schedules and pay-off times went from five and 10 years to 15, 20, 25, 30, 40 years and more. The banks capitalized enormously on these lending practices. Compound interest extended for as long as the gullible public would bear, and made the banks astronomically profitable. Initially they weren’t even sure if they could convince the general public to contract such huge long-term debt commitments. But untethered capitalism and the desire for “more than one could really afford” reigned supreme. Communities like Levittown (America’s first planned “assembly-line” subdivision in Long Island, N.Y.) were enormously successful. The groundwork for today’s real estate and mortgage template was cast.
People who really couldn’t afford the credit they desired were given loans at higher rates to counter balance higher gross-debt-ratios. Even those who didn’t qualify under normal circumstance could also live beyond their means through creative and exotic loans like
Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) and 40- or 50-year amortization periods. Therein lies the core-formula for millions of Americans losing what used to be their most valued and protected asset, their homes. The formula was to over-extend ourselves, live beyond our means or buy more than we could really afford, with funding provided by a lending system that understood high-risk, high-return and gladly participated. Lenders became ‘enablers’ for a public who acted like dope-crazed addicts, never able to satisfy their need for more of this euphoric drug – extended credit.
As long as equity in their investments continued to grow, they were safe. But when over-inflated house values soon began to deflate, they could no longer tap into the reservoir of ‘savings’ built into their homes.
After extending themselves even further with home equity loans, thus adding another monthly payment, the American public was trapped. They became unable and/or unwilling to continue to pay for homes that were worth less than what they owed on them, especially if it crimped their salacious appetite for a lifestyle they could no longer afford. The fallout became apparent to the lending institutions and they quickly lobbied Congress to make it harder for people to bail out through bankruptcy. To nobody’s surprise, the law was passed.
To date, Canada and Canadians have been spared, for the most part from the major fallout experienced in the U.S. Why? We have yet to lower our standards to the point of our neighbours to the south. But will we continue to hold higher standards – and for how long?
That’s the key.
So as a dual citizen who has lived and worked for equal years in the U.S. and Canada, I say, take heed. Be cautious. Real estate, though cyclical, is being influenced by new parameters that have to be weighed in the balance – including demographics and preferences of aging baby boomers, the economic impact of ever-increasing oil prices and the like. How can we protect ourselves? We can try to avoid extended amortization periods, exotic loans and creative financing; but most importantly, simply live within our means – an unpopular idea, but the undeniable truth.
Frank Kirschner, MBA has been licensed in real estate since 1982. He has held a variety of executive positions in the industry, including vice-president and director of operations for Prudential Real Estate Affiliates/Canada; broker/owner of Atlanta Buckhead Realty and executive vice-president, Prudential Sadie Moranis Realty. Email frank@atlantabuckheadrealty.com
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Who’s Your City? Will Toronto And Area Make The Grade?
April 10th, 2008 Categories: Ajax, Area interest, Durham Region, Pickering, Pickering Village
I have been intrigued lately with the press that Richard Florida is getting about his new book, Who’s Your City. The Financial Post reported him as one of the most influential gurus in their Business Magazine and articles about the book are popping up everywhere.
As a realtor, I am curious about how people make decisions to move to certain locations, cities, even neighbourhoods.
I can’t speak as eloquently as Mr. Florida on how this is going to affect Canada, Ontario or the Greater Toronto Area, so here is an article he wrote for The Globe and Mail last December that strikes a cord:
The Globe and Mail
Pity the tri-city Toronto
The Globe And Mail
Saturday, December 22, 2007
For decades we’ve heard that new transport and communication technologies - from the street car to the Internet - would make geography and place irrelevant. We could all spread out and locate wherever we liked. The suburbs would boom, edge cities would predominate and the urban core would fade away into irrelevance. Some told us that the future of the centre of cities was to become little more than a “sandbox” or “reservation” - a holding pen for the urban poor. It turns out that these prognostications were dead wrong. A close look at the real data shows that the world is quite spiky, defined by surging mega- regions, declining hills (like the Clevelands and St. Louises of the world) and sinking valleys (the poor mega-cities and even poorer rural areas of the emerging economies and developing world).Now a landmark study by my University of Toronto colleague J. David Hulchanski of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies, “The Three Cities within Toronto: Income Polarization among Toronto Neighbourhoods, 1970-2000,” shows that Toronto is not only far from immune from these trends but also that its position as a centre for the global creative economy comes with a level of spikiness and economic polarization that are deep cause for concern.The study shows how, from 1970 to 2000, our city of neighbourhoods has been transformed into three separate cities, defined by their economic differences. Toronto may well be a thriving multicultural, ethnic mosaic of the sort Michael Adams’ Unlikely Utopia proudly identifies, but it is one where ethnic diversity is overlaid by growing class division.Some time ago, in his classic studies of the black-white divide in urban American, the sociologist William Julius Wilson wrote of the declining significance of race - meaning that racial division in the United States had given way to a new and more potent divide based on economic class. This divide has ultimately produced a class-polarized America - a divide that underpins and motivates declining social cohesion, a frightening culture war and an increasingly dysfunctional political system.The authors of the U of T report rightly note the intersection of race, ethnicity and class in the emergence of a new, more stratified Toronto, but they also make clear that this class divide has grown glaringly worse in the past couple of decades.
The three Torontos are defined by an increasingly rich and advantaged core, a shrinking middle-class zone, and low-income earners and immigrants at the outskirts. In some ways this is a good thing: Toronto is the opposite of hollowed-out American cities like Detroit and Cleveland. And the pattern is strikingly similar to what is happening in places that are becoming the epicentres of the creative economy. The gentrification of the urban core, with out-of-sight housing prices, is occurring in London, New York, San Francisco, even in Washington, D.C.
What we are witnessing in Toronto is the rise of a new set of economic, demographic and social patterns being set in motion by the global creative economy. There is a mass migration of highly educated and highly skilled people to a smaller and smaller number of cities. Harvard economist Edward Glaeser has documented the sorting of highly educated, high human-capital households in the United States. Thirty years ago, most cities had a similar proportion of educated and less educated people; now highly educated people are concentrated in just a handful of major metropolitan regions like New York, Washington, San Francisco and Seattle.
They have gravitated to the cores of these metros to take advantage of clustered work, gain access to amenities, and reduce their time costs spent on travel. In the five-year period from 2000 to 2005, New York City took in 285, 000 recent college graduates - a number roughly equivalent to the entire population of the city of Buffalo. Driving this is the benefits of economic clustering long ago identified by Jane Jacobs. It is the clustering of people, even more so than the clustering of business and industry, that today is the motor force of economic growth.
Left to its own devices, this clustering is causing the sorting of people by economic class. Not just across cities but within them, as the U of T report demonstrates. This is also similar to what is happening in the United States. Kevin Stolarick of the Martin Prosperity Institute has shown that the leading U. S. creative regions (San Francisco, Austin, the North Carolina Research Triangle, and Washington) also have the highest levels of income inequality. While not quite in this league, Toronto is beginning to see a similar trend of economic and social polarization.
We need to understand the tremendous economic and social polarization produced by the shift to a global creative economy. The same things happened with the Industrial Revolution. It took the leading nations of the world 50 or more years to understand it - a period punctuated by depression, epic class struggles, and two world wars - and finally for progressive leaders to enact new deals that would spread the productive capacity of the industrial engine and allow working people to benefit from the productivity improvements their work helped create.
It’s time to wake up and act on these striking new realities. The key task of our time is to build new institutions to spread the gains of the creative economy. If not, it will continue to concentrate those gains geographically and socially.
This is Toronto’s and Canada’s great opportunity. It’s also a major part of the reason why I moved to Toronto. Absent a major miracle, the level of economic and social polarization is so deep in the United States that it may well prohibit the kind of concerted action required to overcome that class divide and build a more cohesive and shared creative economy.
In my view there are at best three economies worldwide that have the social capacity to navigate and lead in this change. Canada is one, Australia another, the Scandinavian nations still another. And that leadership, given the absence of awareness of these issues at the national level, will have to come from the major cities in these nations.
Toronto, despite its worsening economic polarization, or perhaps because of it, is perhaps in the best position worldwide to lead here. It should put aside its dream of becoming another New York, London or, in some quarters, another high-tech Silicon Valley. Those are yesterday’s models - thriving commercial cores and growing polarization and poverty. Toronto must break the mould and strive to deal with the spikiness and polarization that its improved position in the global creative economy has brought with it.
As I have seen for myself, despite this polarization, Toronto remains a cohesive community. Even as that cohesion is stressed, the city remains the unlikely utopia Mr. Adams identified. In contrast to the U.S., where there is open class warfare, moves to restrict immigration and lashing out against gays and lesbians, Toronto has what it takes to bridge the class divide. My conversations assure me that economic and business leaders are aware of this; at a recent meeting with Mayor David Miller and key political leaders, this was the central topic of discussion.
But we need to move quickly in light of what this landmark U of T study shows us. We need to develop strategies to close the gap. We need to make sure immigrants have a chance to see their full skills be rewarded. We need to make sure all Torontonians can use their creative capabilities and as such contribute even more fully to economic growth.
And we need to upgrade the service economy as a key part of our strategy for the future. Low-paying service jobs are analogous to what blue-collar jobs were in the industrial age. Just as unionization and collective bargaining made once- low-paying blue-collar jobs into well-paying ones that could support families, Toronto - and Canada - must do something analagous to improve work in the service economy.
Caught today between the twin pillars of economic growth and widening social and economic polarization, Toronto has the opportunity to become a model of the prosperous, sustainable and inclusive region - one where each and every person can fully develop their talents, find work that fufills their dreams, and connect the further development of human creative capabilities to future economic prosperity.
The three Torontos can become one Toronto. The time to act is now.
Richard Florida is a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and academic director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School. He is the founder of the Creative Class Group (creativeclass. com) in Washington, D.C., which develops strategies for business, government and community competitiveness, and author of the bestselling books The Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class.
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South Pickering Market Update: Market Holding Steady
April 7th, 2008 Categories: Durham Region, Pickering, Real Estate News
As I drive around the neighbourhoods in South Pickering, I do see some listing activity. I also know from talk around the water cooler that there are some antsy sellers out there. Things just seem a little slow.
After looking at all the statistics, I can tell you that the real estate market seems to be doing okay. Compared to last year, which was the best all-round year yet, we are on par. There were 26 sales of resale homes this March and 22 sales last March.
The average price of homes sold in the month of March doesn’t tell us much looked at in isolation. The average price of homes sold was $260,200. The average price for all homes sold this year in South Pickering was $280,779. This just means that lower priced homes were selling.
With the snow gone and the grass greening up, we expect the buyers to come out with the sun. A word of caution, buyers are educated to house prices too.
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GTA Resale Housing Sales Ease in March
April 4th, 2008 Categories: Ajax, Durham Region, Oshawa, Pickering, Pickering Village, Real Estate News, Whitby
TORONTO, April 3, 2008 — Low inventory levels kept the Greater Toronto Area resale housing market brisk but well off record levels last month, Toronto Real Estate Board President Maureen O’Neill announced today.
“Overall sales in the GTA declined 22 per cent compared to March 2007, 27 per cent in the City of Toronto and 18 per cent in the 905 suburbs,” said Ms. O’Neill. “It’s important to recognize though, that despite the worst winter in decades, 6,631 homes changed hands last month in the GTA and that is still a significant number.”
Diminished listing inventory, which at 20,533, was down six per cent from a year ago, kept prices strong in March.
Compared to last March, the average price in the GTA rose four per cent to $380,338 and two per cent in the City of Toronto to $404,361.
As well, a few neighbourhoods experienced increased sales activity last month.
Bowmanville (E17) saw a three per cent increase in transactions compared to March 2007, driven primarily by strong detached home sales.
Sales in Burlington (W25) were up 18 per cent compared to a year ago, with brisk activity in most housing categories.
Thorncliffe Park (C11) saw a six per cent overall increase in transactions, based mainly on semi-detached sales.
Increased semi-detached transactions also drove sales in Georgina (N17) up one per cent compared to last March.
Ms. O’Neill says March’s moderate performance isn’t disquieting given that Canadian economic fundamentals are holding steady.
“Forty per cent of international households that come to Canada settle in the GTA, giving us robust immigration evels; employment and wages continue to be strong; borrowing costs remain at historically low levels and there is a wide variety of mortgage products from which to choose,” she said.
“This means that there is a steady demand for housing and consumers should have the financial resources to buy homes; with such pent-up demand it is an excellent time to sell your home.”
“We remain concerned about the land transfer tax in Toronto and the economic slowdown in the United States,” added Ms. O’Neill. “Home sales in the City of Toronto spiked towards the end of 2007 probably in a bid to avoid the Toronto land transfer tax, but have since dropped off since the introduction of the tax.”
Go to the source the Toronto Real Estate Board.
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