CMHC to push for national housing strategy

CMHC to push for national housing strategy

Canada’s housing agency will begin a push for a national housing strategy to support affordable housing. “This year, CMHC will work with other federal colleagues to undertake broad-based consultations on a national housing strategy,” Evan Siddall, chief executive officer of Canada Mortgage & Housing Corp., said in a speech.

Bloomberg

RioCan proposes four residential buildings in TO

Three Cara-owned chain restaurants face the proverbial ‘chopping block’ at the intersection of Islington and The Queensway in Etobicoke. Along with a Scotiabank branch, the eateries could give way to RioCan‘s (REI.UN-T) recently proposed 588-unit residential development at 1001 The Queensway.

Urban Toronto

Fortress remains bullish on GTA housing market

The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) housing market shows few signs of slowing down, while conditions in Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Winnipeg are also healthier than some might expect. “Toronto is a tale of two markets,” said Fortress Real Developments‘ senior vice-president of market research and analytics Ben Myers.

Property Biz Canada – Globe and Mail – Newinhomes.com – Globe and Mail

Vancouver, TO buyers not ‘reckless’: National Bank

First-time buyers looking to take the home-ownership plunge in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada’s two hottest markets, are far from “reckless,” says National Bank (NA-T) chief economist Stéfane Marion. Instead, the prices they face reflect the rapid growth of employment in both cities and that the population of young people aged 20 to 44 is growing, he says. 

CBC News – Globe and Mail – Buzzbuzzhome.com – Financial Post

Vancouver, TO condo investors in for long term: Survey

Condominium investors in Vancouver and Toronto are mostly made of small-scale investors with a majority of them expecting to hold on to their property for the long haul, according to a new survey from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. The Ottawa-based Crown Corporation does an annual look in what it calls the Condominium Owners Report.

Financial Post – Marketwired

Renters relocate to Vancouver suburbs

Results from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.’s first-ever rental turnover survey in Metro Vancouver points to a migration of rental demand from the pricier centre to less-expensive suburbs. The survey, which tracked the number of purpose-built rental suites that changed hands during the 12 months up to the fall of 2015, found 19 per cent of units had new tenants.

Vancouver Province

Real Estate Council fast-tracks new measures

Under intense pressure to show real estate sales are conducted properly, the Real Estate Council of BC has fast-tracked a series of measures designed to restore confidence. The regulatory body has faced severe criticism over allegations of misleading advertising, coercive or predatory sales practices and the assignment of contracts.

CBC News – CTV News – Globe and Mail – Canada Newswire

Real estate scams need high-tech attention: Experts

Experts say money laundering, fraud and tax evasion in B.C.’s speculative real estate market could be impossible to tackle unless agency information silos are broken and enforcement is increased with high-tech efficiency. Concerns Vancouver’s property market is at risk of being flooded with dirty cash were confirmed after a six-month review by Fintrac.

Ottawa Citizen

Canadian homes now cheaper for Chinese buyers

Canadian house prices climbed 27 per cent over the five years from February 2011, to February 2016, according to the Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price index. However, the currencies of China, the U.S. and Switzerland have gained so much against the Canadian dollar they have outrun the increase in Canadian house prices.

Globe and Mail (Subscription Required)

No bottom in sight for Calgary housing market

Even realtors in Calgary are suggesting picking the bottom of the housing market is getting tougher and tougher in the oilpatch. The Calgary Real Estate Board said Friday its benchmark house price dropped 0.49 per cent from February and is now at $442,800. Prices were 3.51 per cent lower from a year ago.

Financial Post – Huffington Post – Calgary Herald – Calgary Herald

Boomer investors overexposed on real estate?

For more than two years, author Hilliard MacBeth has been predicting a Canadian housing market correction. But he didn’t expect the first leg of the decline to transpire in his own backyard in his hometown of Edmonton, or Calgary three hours away. He sees what happens when the cracks in an overheated real estate market start to show.

Canadian Business

Millennials don’t hate the suburbs: Survey

It might not be as cool as living downtown, but a new survey suggests millennials might not hate suburbia all that much. Altus Group, citing its 2015 fall FIRM survey, says 35 per cent of those 35-and-under disagree with the statement they prefer to live in a smaller home in a central area than a larger home in the suburbs.

Financial Post – Globe and Mail – Globe and Mail

U.S. MF returns will adjust as rental growth slows

While U.S. investors will continue to push multi-family prices at or above prior peak levels, returns will begin to adjust, but only a major capital-markets disruption will impact current pricing, the ConAm Group’s president and CIO Rob Singh tells GlobeSt.com.

Globest.com

Welcome to the future: Middle-class housing projects

San Francisco’s long-held notion of itself as a home to the progressive middle is harder and harder to sustain. The quandary became flagrant last week: news circulated the Palo Alto City Council had moved to explore subsidized housing for families earning between $150 thousand and $250 thousand a year.

The New Yorker

WeWork launches WeLive rental apartments

WeWork, the co-working real estate startup valued north of $5 billion, is launching WeLive, a residential rental building that offers flexible renting and a nicely packaged set of amenities. The new program launches for New York as well as D.C.

TechCrunch

RENX Columnists

Your neighbourhood: Keeping mom and pop shops happy

Everyone wants to discover that hidden gem in their neighbourhood. Visiting a certain store or restaurant that just has that something special be it comfort food, nostalgia, or price point.

Read more

Are millennials still interested in buying homes?

Canada is in the midst of a rental housing boom, every major city is building at near-record-level highs. As of February 2016, there were 2,307 rental units under construction in Calgary, compared to the 20-year average of 359 between 1995 and 2014.

Read more

Market Conditions

Canadians expect continued rise in prices

Canadians are looking past signs of damage from low energy prices and predicting the housing surge will continue. According to weekly polling by Nanos Research, the share of respondents expecting higher real estate prices reached the most since December 2014 last week, or 38.7 percent.

Montreal Gazette

Even luxury listings don’t last in Vancouver

The Vancouver region’s real estate market is so hot even luxury properties are selling at a faster clip and being snapped up for millions of dollars above their assessed value. The elite-end transactions contributed to the highest number of sales ever recorded for any month in Greater Vancouver.

Globe and Mail – Vancouver Sun – Business In Vancouver – BC Business

Tax change worries U.K. rental sector

The U.K. government has dropped plans to exempt large investors from a three pre cent residential property tax, causing concern for the country’s emerging private rented sector (PRS). The U.K. budget included changes to stamp duty land tax (SDLT) on buy-to-let residential property, as well as higher SDLT rates for commercial transactions.

IPE Real Estate – IPE Real Estate – IPE Real Estate

Top 10 U.S. cities for foreclosure discounts

PHOTO GALLERY: Pittsburgh takes first place for the biggest discount on foreclosed homes in a sizeable U.S. city, at 63 per cent, amount to a median sales price of only $48,180—also the second lowest sales price on our list. This city with more than 2.35 million inhabitants has a stock of approximately 1.1 million housing units.

National Real Estate Investor

Newest trend in luxury real estate is walls

For Wendy Maitland, Town Residential’s president of sales, an Oscar-winning director client of hers was a typical real estate shopper with typical requests. He had a seven-figure budget and was keen to buy into one of the many new luxury condo complexes sprouting around Manhattan. The client was downsizing from a huge country house in Connecticut.

Bloomberg

Latest reports:

* Toronto, Global News

* Windsor, Remax, Windsor Star, Windsor Star, Windsor Star 

* Regina, Association of Regina Realtors, Regina Leader-Post

* Edmonton, Realtors Association of Edmonton, CBC News, Edmonton Journal

* Vancouver Island, Vancouver Island Real Estate Board, Victoria Times Colonist

* Victoria, Victoria Real Estate Board, Victoria Times Colonist, Marketwired

* Manhattan, Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers & Consultants, CNBC, Bloomberg, The Real Deal, The Guardian 

* Pittsburgh, Trulia, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

* Texas, CoStar Group, Commercial Property Executive

RENX Market Summaries

Mortgage and Finance

Equifax, Teranet partner to assess credit worthiness

Credit rating agency Equifax Canada and land registry company Teranet Enterprises Inc. are partnering up. The two Toronto-based companies have signed a five-year agreement to create a service for clients that will use the analytical expertise and the credit and property data assets that each company possesses to assess homeowners’ credit worthiness.

Financial Post

Simple credit error can home-owning dream

Imagine the anxiety of watching your credit score unexpectedly plummet after spending your entire adult life maintaining good credit. Now suppose this credit decline blocks you from getting a mortgage on the house you planned to buy. It happens to mortgage applicants all across the country with surprisingly frequency.

Globe and Mail

Renovation, Repair and Maintenance

Ont. looks to regulate home inspectors

Alyssa Hanson thought she had done her due diligence on the home inspection front. Hanson brought in three professionals — a home inspector, a septic tank inspector and a specialist for the fireplace and wood stove — before she and her family purchased their dream home, a 2,000-square-foot house with a view of the Rideau River in Ottawa.

CTV News

NYC apartment buildings being turned into houses

It started as a joke in the Onion: Nation’s Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization. It is a reality now, as the very rich turn entire apartment buildings into single family houses. The Wall Street Journal described one project that converted a building with 10 500-square foot apartments into a single-family six-bedroom house.

Treehugger

When math professors redesign a downtown loft

Etched in laser-cut cherrywood, the wall mural in the entry to a converted loft designed by Plant Architect, is compelling on its own terms. But it’s much more than a cool-looking work of art. For the mural is actually a three-dimensional expression of a fundamental math equation known as a Fibonacci sequence.

Montreal Gazette

Pristine Vancouver home ready for demolition

A pristine-condition, five-bedroom, four-bathroom house is in the west-side neighbourhood of Southlands and was built in 1937. It sits on a 132-by-100-foot park-like lot amid mature gardens, with potential for subdivision. The owner has applied for a demolition permit. The asking price? $4.468 million

Globe and Mail

Taxes and Utilities

Alberta electricity prices dive

Alberta spot power prices reached their lowest levels since 1997 in the first quarter of 2016 and are expected to remain at multi-year lows for the rest of the year and into 2017 due in part to the current economic slump, according to an investment bank report Friday.

Calgary Herald – Calgary Herald

Legal Issues

Shared housing, micro apartments push legal limits

Housing advocates and innovative developers are finding new ways to provide housing in some of the U.S.’s most expensive apartment markets. For example, Stage 3 Properties, based in New York City, provides micro-apartments and generous shared amenity spaces in high-end multi-family properties, most of them in the city’s expensive Long Island City neighbourhood. 

National Real Estate Investor

Affordable Housing

Ontario’s affordable housing proposal rankles builders’ group

The Ontario government’s plan to allow municipalities to mandate affordable housing in new developments will hurt homebuyers by jacking up prices, the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association says. The legislation proposed in mid-March would allow cities to establish so-called inclusionary zoning policies.

Ottawa Business Journal

Home unaffordability spurring Americans to act

Counter to what one would expect, many consumers are starting to get caught up in the home-buying frenzy, believing that if they don’t buy now, they may miss out on buying a home, RealtyTrac’s VP Daren Blomquist tells GlobeSt.com. According to a recent report from the firm, some markets are increasingly less affordable than a year ago.

Globest.com – National Real Estate Investor – Globest.com

Small houses

Blood Tribe joins tiny house movement

In the backyard of a Blood Tribe high school, students are working on a massive shop project — three tiny homes. The 10 students at Kainai High School had to undergo a formal job application process, with resumes, references and interviews, to land the gig. Under the supervision of a longtime shop teacher with a background in construction, the young apprentices are learning how to build tiny homes from the ground up.

Calgary Herald

Cities, Towns and Urban Issues

Rental housing for residents: Vancouver councillor

A Vancouver councillor is eyeing regulation of home-sharing services like Airbnb, as the city’s rental vacancy rate hovers near zero. Coun. Geoff Meggs wants to expand and accelerate a study already underway by city staff on the effect Airbnb and similar websites are having on the supply of rental housing.

Saskatoon StarPhoenix

TO encouraging family-friendly condo communities

The City of Toronto recently announced the launching of a study to improve planning to better accommodate families in multi-unit residential buildings. The plan is called Growing Up: Planning for Children in New Vertical Communities. The will examine the condo lifestyle from three different perspectives: The condo unit, the building, and the neighbourhood.

Newinhomes.com

Mortgage loans, grants aiding Detroit’s comeback

Banks and other lending companies are making capital available to home buyers and businesses in Detroit. Lending and grant programs have included $5 million in grants pledged by Detroit-based Quicken Loans to help improve up to 65 vacant houses for auction in four west side neighbourhoods as part of the “Rehabbed and Ready” program.

Winnipeg Free Press – Detroit News

Buying and Selling

Miami condo developer takes loonie at par

With Canadians bailing out of the Florida property market due to the low loonie, a Florida developer is taking the weakened Canadian dollar at par for condos in a posh new Miami Beach development. Better than at par, in fact: The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Miami Beach, is offering a 35 per cent discount to Canadians. 

Huffington Post – Wall Street Journal

Vancouver condo sells below assessed value

Residents of a Lower Lonsdale condo tower are concerned their home values could be harmed by the unusual below-assessed value sale of a vacant unit owned by investors from China. The condo unit was listed for $700,000 and sold for $730,000,  according to an MLS filing. Shortly after, an “identical” unit sold for $1.2 million.

Vancouver Sun

Big Fat Deal: Filigree and flounce

Address: 3301 – 501 Pacific Street, Vancouver
Price:  $7,838,000
MLS: R2027208
The skinny: Four-bedroom, three-bathroom, 6,101-square-foot downtown Vancouver penthouse with 1,700 square feet of outdoor terraces.
The bling: Nothing says success like a penthouse, right? You’re on top of the world, and here’s a massive slice of the city’s real estate pie just for you. And what a slice!

BCBusiness

Cash bonuses for B.C. agents called into question

Here’s another oddity about real estate for buyers already facing high home prices. Tucked in the fine print of some Multiple Listing Service posts that can only be seen by agents are cash bonuses for agents on top of the usual standard commission. Some are a flat amount. Others seem to reward a buyer’s agent as the sale price increases.

Victoria Times Colonist

Other

Presenting the eVolo Skyscraper Competition winners

For 11 years, eVolo Magazine has been recognizing and awarding visionary ideas for high-rise projects. For the annual eVolo Skyscraper Competition, designers and architects from around the world “are challenged to re-examine the skyscraper’s definition, purpose, and potential for vertical living in the 21st century.”

Newinhomes.com