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 'Pickering' 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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What’s Happening In Your Neck Of The Woods? Local Real Estate Updates
July 6th, 2008 Categories: Ajax, Buying real estate, Oshawa, Pickering, Selling real estate
As I was reviewing the June statistics, I looked over the detail that is always presented and is usually glanced at.
Here is what I found:
- In South Pickering:
– 4 condo apartments were for sale and none sold.
– 10 condo townhouses were actively for sale and 4 sold with the average sale price of $231,700.
– 2 linked homes (attached by the garage) were for sale and none sold.
– 5 freehold townhomes were listed for sale and 1 sold.
– 6 semi-detached were for sale and 6 of them sold with an average price of $232,000. That’s a rare site to see everything sold.
– 48 detached homes were for sale and 27 of them sold. That’s a solid 56% sell through rate. We only worry if it stays below 40% for a number of months. - In North Pickering:
– 15 condo apartments were listed for sale and 14 sold. Pretty good odds.
– 49 condo townhouses were for sale and 16 sold for an average sale price of $208,000.
– 6 linked homes were for sale and 2 sold. Not a popular option in Pickering this month.
– 32 freehold townhomes were listed and 15 of them sold for an average of $253,000.
– 18 semi-detached were actively listed and 3 sold.
– 199 detached homes were listed for sale and 60 of them sold for a sell through rate of 30% and an average price of $339,390. - In Ajax: (let’s start at the top)
– 344 detached homes were listed and 124 sold for an average price of $318,750.
– 29 semi-detached were for sale and 9 of them sold for an average of $255,500.
– 53 freehold townhomes were actively listed and 22 of them sold.
– 8 linked homes were for sale and 3 sold.
– 31 condo townhomes were listed and 7 sold.
– 3 detached condo were listed in south Ajax and one sold.
– 17 condo apartments were for sale and 6 sold.
The days on market is holding steady at about 30 days giving buyers the chance to be sure of their decisions.
Want the magnifying glass to deeper and find out about your neighbourhood, I can give you what you need.
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GTA Resale Housing Continues Steady Pace
June 20th, 2008 Categories: Ajax, Buying real estate, Pickering, Pickering Village, Real Estate News, Selling real estate
TORONTO, June 18, 2008 — The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) resale housing market continued at a moderate but healthy pace throughout the first half of June, Toronto Real Estate Board President Maureen O’Neill announced today.
Prices continued their upward trend in the first half of this month. The GTA average price is currently $398,542, up four per cent over the $384,576 average from the same timeframe a year ago and up 11 per cent from the $358,648 recorded at mid-June 2006.
In the City of Toronto the current average price is $439,469, up three per cent over the $424,888 average a year ago and up 14 per cent over the $386,960 average in the first half of June 2006.
In the 905 Region the average price is $371,686 up four per cent from the $357,359 average a year ago and up 10 per cent from the $338,578 recorded at mid-June 2006.
“With 4,374 transactions in the first two weeks of this month, sales in the GTA declined 14 per cent compared to the same timeframe a year ago, which was particularly a strong year, when 5,074 properties were sold,” said Ms. O’Neill. “However, compared to the first half of June 2006 when 4,074 properties changed hands, this month’s activity is up seven per cent.
In the City of Toronto 1,733 sales took place to mid-June 2008. This represents a 15 per cent decrease compared to the 2,045 properties sold a year ago but a two per cent increase over the 1,690 transactions in the first half of June 2006. A different story emerges when you compare the first half of June 2007 before the Toronto Land Transfer Tax went into effect to the same period in June 2006, a period showing a 21 per cent increase in sales.
In the 905 Region, the scenario was similar. In the first two weeks of June, 2,641 properties were sold. This represents a 13 per cent decline compared to the 3,029 homes sold in the first half of June 2007 but an 11 percent increase over the 2,384 properties sold at mid-June 2006. When you compare the first half of June 2007 to the same period in June 2006, sales increased by 27 per cent.
Certain communities including Riverdale, West Agincourt, Caledon and Richmond Hill South experienced strong activity in the first half of this month.
In Riverdale (E01) transactions increased 28 per cent compared to the first half of June 2007 driven by strong condominium apartment sales.
Condominium apartment transactions also drove West Agincourt (E05) to a 24 per cent increase in sales compared to the same timeframe a year ago.
In Caledon (W28) detached home transactions led to a nine per cent increase in sales over the same period a year ago.
Richmond Hill South (N03) also experienced strong detached home sales, which resulted in a five per cent increase from mid-June 2007.
“With employment and interest rates holding steady and a 17 per cent increase in available listings compared to a year ago, it is an ideal time to take advantage of all that the market has to offer,” said Ms. O’Neill.
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Toronto REALTORS® are passionate about their work. They adhere to a strict code of ethics |
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Get Government Assistant for Home Renovations that Include a Rental Unit
June 18th, 2008 Categories: Ajax, Buying real estate, Pickering, Pickering Village, Real Estate News
The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) wants to help you put a legal, rent-able suite in your home.
Looking at the possibility of home affordability being out 
of reach for some people. CMHC has initiated a Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program (RRAP) which will pay for or help pay for renovations.
RRAP is available to home owners, private entrepreneurs or First Nations people who, adhering to local building and zoning bylaws, want to put a secondary or garden suite into their home or on their property.
The idea is to assist “ïn the creation of affordable housing for low-income seniors and adults with a disability by providing financial assistance to convert or redevelop existing residential properties.”
Before you start your renovations, check with CMHC to see if you are eligible. If you meet the conditions of the program, you can receive a fully-forgivable loan—that’s right, fully-forgivable—which may be used to cover the costs. You can receive up to $24,000 per unit.
Call me for more details or go to the CMHC web site for information about the program.
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Get The Facts: The Local Real Estate Market Update for Pickering and Ajax
June 12th, 2008 Categories: Ajax, Buying real estate, Pickering, Pickering Village, Selling real estate
I was reading how the real estate market in Toronto is down from last year. The first caveat I would like to impress upon you is that last year was the best year on record. It might be an unfair comparison. We can’t always have the best year.
So is this year working for the real estate market? I went to work to see what was happening with the listings and the sales. This is what I found:
In South Pickering:
There were 19 sales below $300,000 in May. Of those sales, 2 of them sold for more than their list price. On average, they sold for 98% of their list price. The average list price was $270,904 and the average sale price was $267,842.
There were 14 sales above $300,000 in May. Of those sales, 2 of them sold for more than their list price. The highest sale was for $541,000. The number of days that it took for the sales to happen was 16 days.
In North Pickering:
There were 28 sales below $300,000 in May. 15 listings were put on the market and 5 of them changed their price. As with South Pickering, on average the homes sold for 98% of their list price.
There were 63 sales over $300,000. The highest sale was for $1,000,000. Seven of the sales were sold for over the list price. On average, they sold for 98% of their list price which was $418,447.
In Ajax:
Ajax was a busier market. There were 89 sales in May below $300,000 and 89 sales above $300,000. Of the 178 sales, 17 of them were over their list price with the most being 105% of the list price. The lowest sale was $155,000 and the highest sale was $548,000.
This is a lot of information. Is the real estate market working? Yes, if you list your home based on the market price and sometimes have a little patience. The market will work for you.
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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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What Will $1 Million Buy You in North Pickering?
May 14th, 2008 Categories: Buying real estate, Pickering, Real Estate News
Since the April market in North Pickering didn’t produce any interesting numbers, I was curious what a million dollars could by you in the area.
In North Pickering, there are 2 million dollar listings: one on Fairport Road and one in the country on 4th concession. Both properties are spacious and upgraded lavishly. And both have lots of space around them.
Looking for a custom home that might fit your budget better. There is a gorgeous bungalow on Heathside that is worth a look—and is available for under $440,000.
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South Pickering Is One Market That Is Coasting Into Spring
May 12th, 2008 Categories: Buying real estate, Pickering, Real Estate News, Selling real estate
The national press is presenting a cautiously pessimistic attitude to the real estate market. The buyers in South Pickering must be listening.
In spite of there being some great value in the area, only 22% of the 81 active listings sold. In April of 2007, 26 homes in Pickering, south of the 401. This April saw 18.
The number of days that a home is staying on the market is 38 compared to 34 last year. In April, the homes that were selling sold faster than in March.
Unlike the national press, I like to be cautiously optimistic. With gas prices rising, Toronto home affordability questionable, South Pickering offers a value-priced, GO-train-serviced area that buyers should take a close look at.
Where else can you get a detached home a 5 minute walk to the waterfront trail, for less than $300,000. I can show you some great ones.
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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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North Pickering Real Estate Market Update: Listings Are Taking A Month To Sell
April 7th, 2008 Categories: Pickering, Real Estate News
Often people will comment to me that everything seems to be selling quickly. It’s a funny thing about averages. Some things sell fast and some things sell slow. In North Pickering, it is taking, on average 33 days to sell a resale home, which is the same it took last March.
Looking at that number, we see that, yes, some homes are indeed selling in a couple of days. Some are taking a lot longer.
The other numbers in the market update, show us that north Pickering has experienced a few less sales this March, 86, over last March, 110; and the number of listings are down slightly as well—March 2008, 182 new listings and March 2007, 220.
The average price for resale homes sold in North Pickering this March was $312,447. Last March saw an average price of $327,593.
As with all the areas, we are looking to the sun to heat things up a bit.
On an aside, my resident weather tracker, my mother, let me know that last April 6 was below freezing with snow on the ground. What a difference a year makes.
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