Toronto hotel to condo conversions threaten tourism

Toronto hotel to condo conversions threaten tourism

A set of proposals to redevelop eight Toronto hotels into condos could endanger up to 2,000 well-paid jobs — and hamstring the city’s multi-billion dollar tourism trade, according to worker advocates and industry experts. The conversions impact some of Toronto’s marquee downtown venues, including the Park Hyatt and Chelsea.

Toronto Star

OMB strikes down part of proposed TO development

The Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) has stopped the most contentious part of a midtown Toronto townhouse development while approving the rest of a project widely criticized by neighbours as “density creep.” The 80-unit project by Freed Developments proposed two rows of four-storey stacked townhouses.

CBC – CBC – Globe and Mail – Globe and Mail

Killam, KingSett finalize Kanata complex acquisition

The final phase of William’s Court at Kanata Lakes, the largest rental apartment complex built in Canada in more than 40 years, has been sold by developer Francis Lépine’s Lépine Corporation to Killam Apartment REIT  (KMP.UN-T) and KingSett Capital. Five luxury apartment buildings totalling 739 units have been built on the five-acre site since Lépine first broke ground in 2010. 

Property Biz Canada

How Canada’s big banks pumped up the housing bubble

Royal Bank of Canada (RY-T) CEO David McKay flattered some Bay Street reporters with rare interviews the other day, having just conducted another clinic in money-making by guiding his 148-year-old institution to a record quarterly profit of $3 billion. What better time for a banker to subject himself to scrutiny than amidst a flurry of zeroes?

Maclean’s

Foreign-buyers tax not a cure-all for TO: Report

A new report suggests a foreign buyer tax alone can’t solve Toronto’s soaring housing prices. “In High Demand,” released Monday by Ryerson University’s City Building Institute, favours a tax on foreign buyers but suggests it should be implemented in addition to a “progressive surtax” on expensive homes owned by people not paying income tax, including people with foreign capital.

Winnipeg Free Press – Winnipeg Free Press – Globe and Mail – CBC

Smarter tax would ease Vancouver’s housing crisis

Is it time for elected officials to finally get serious about Metro Vancouver’s housing crisis? Unaffordability remains at catastrophic levels. The real-estate bubble has not deflated eight months after the B.C. government applied a 15 per cent tax on foreign buyers of Metro real estate.

Vancouver Sun

B.C. to tweak foreign buyer tax

B.C.’s finance minister will unveil new exemptions and rebates for the foreign buyer tax on Metro Vancouver real estate this week. International citizens with work permits, who pay taxes in B.C., won’t have to pay the foreign buyer surcharge. That’s a bid to recruit high-tech workers from the U.S.

Vancouver Sun – Vancouver Sun – CBC

Vancouver pledges to speed up development permits

The City of Vancouver says it will implement measures to improve the city’s building permit process which has been plagued by excessive delays and high volume. In 2016, the city received 8,300 permit applications, the second highest volume of applications the city has seen to date. Housing development reached an all-time high over the past two years, the report revealed.

CBC – Vancouver Sun – Vancouver Sun

Dream slows Saskatoon construction dramatically

The developer behind one of Saskatoon’s newest and largest neighbourhoods hasn’t adjusted its decade-long construction timeline to account for the city’s soft real estate market, but it is trying to avoid building too much, too fast. Dream Development is happy with single-family home sales but “cautious” about apartment and condominium construction in the east Saskatoon subdivision.

Saskatoon StarPhoenix – Property Biz Canada

High-tech future demands we start smart-city conversation now

We wait too long in Vancouver to have important conversations. We can see the trail of problems in hindsight, be they housing and planning issues, transit deficiencies, chronic homelessness or identity politics that have distorted the jobs we attract and repel.

Business In Vancouver

Ottawa councillor mulls licensing landlords

An Ottawa city councillor says he wants to explore the idea of licensing landlords in order to provide tenants with added protection. Mathieu Fleury’s comments on CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning follow a report by Ottawa ACORN last week recommending landlords be required to obtain a municipal license in order to operate. ACORN advocates for people living on low incomes.

CBC

K-W homeowners scared to sell during red-hot market

Waterloo Region is a seller’s market. On the surface, that sounds like great news for Gerry Best. Eight years ago, Best bought a six-bedroom house in Cambridge’s South Galt neighbourhood.  Now that his kids have grown up, he and his wife are ready to downsize. But, where will they find another house?

CTV – 570 News

Canadian suburbs ‘no place to grow old’

It was a conversation a decade ago with a friend who worked as an old age psychiatrist that spurred Glenn Miller to research how Canadian suburbs can become age-friendly. Miller recently authored a 26-page report examining aging and city planning, released last week by the Institute for Research on Public Policy, a national think-tank. 

Calgary Herald

NMHC, NAA seek rollback of apartment regulations

The apartment industry is calling on the Trump administration to stem some of the “flood” of federal regulations that can make multi-family development less economically feasible. The National Multifamily Housing Council and National Apartment Association cited rules covering everything from energy use to construction lending and asked the administration to reform or rescind them. 

GlobeSt.com/

Macro factors affecting U.S. home demand

Some-buying demand will continue to grow, driven mainly by Millennials deciding they would like to buy, First American Financial Corp.’s (FAF-N) chief economist Mark Fleming tells GlobeSt.com. The firm’s recent Potential Home Sales Model reports the impact of rising rates continues to play with market potential. 

GlobeSt.com – GlobeSt.com – Fortune

RENX Columnists

Where is your lottery ticket to fund retirement?

Personal saving in Canada appears doomed to join such fading skills as cursive writing and knowing how to dial a rotary phone. But just whose fault is it, anyway?

Read more

Market Conditions

Windsor housing prices highest in decades

Windsor housing prices are continuing to rise at a sizzling hot pace as winter comes to a close. The average home sold for nearly $247,000 in February, which was an 18 per cent increase compared the average sale price during the same month last year, according to the latest figures from the Windsor-Essex County Association of Realtors.

CBC

Canadian market enjoys best February on record: Teranet

Canadian home prices rose in February as prices continued to climb in the hot Toronto market, data showed on Tuesday in a report that was unlikely to alleviate concerns from some quarters that the city is facing a real estate bubble. The Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index showed prices rose 1.0 per cent from January.

Reuters – Globe and Mail (Subscription required) – Business In Vancouver

What you can get for $300K in the Montreal area

Residential sales in the greater Montreal area were up in February compared to the same time last year, according to the Greater Montreal Real Estate Board. The association says the $300,000 price point is key in those statistics. The median price of single-family homes reached $296,662 in February across the metropolitan region, an increase of four per cent over February 2016.

CBC

Manhattan apartment rents fall for every size

Rents fell last month for Manhattan apartments of all sizes, the first across-the-board price decline in at least four years, as a construction boom brought more buildings to market and allowed some tenants to leave for bigger or newer units. For studios, the median rent dropped 2.6 per cent, appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate said in a report.

Bloomberg

Canadian new home prices rise in January

Canadian new home prices edged up at the start of the year, driven again by higher prices in the hot Toronto market, data from Statistics Canada showed on Thursday. Prices rose 0.1 per cent in January, keeping pace with December’s increase. On a year-over-year basis, prices climbed 3.1 per cent.

Reuters – Reuters

Real estate trends for 2017 in Nova Scotia

Last year turned out to be a positive one in Nova Scotia real estate with residential sales rising 21.6 per cent overall and sellers receiving asking price for their homes. Tanya White, communications adviser for the Nova Scotia Association of Realtors, says most younger buyers are looking for homes that require little work.

The Vanguard

Mortgage and Finance

For prudent buyers, the indignity of higher mortgage rates

The latest mortgage rate trends remind us the virtues of prudent saving and spending are disrespected. Home buyers who put less than 20 per cent down are seen as risky enough to require that they pay the cost of default insurance for their lender. But the best mortgage rates are sometimes going to people with small down payments.

Globe and Mail

Renovation, Repair and Maintenance

Residents return to Victoria tower evacuated over asbestos fears

Residents finally returned to their homes in a Victoria  apartment tower on Thursday after it was evacuated at the end of January. In December, WorkSafeBC issued a stop work order for the building due to concerns ongoing renovations had disturbed asbestos on the site. A month later residents were moved out of the building.

CBC – Victoria Times Colonist

Taxes and Utilities

Property assessments soar in Moncton area

Homeowners of an Acton Court cul-de-sac in Moncton are frustrated from assessment notices revealing double digit increases in their property values and tax bills. Moncton and other nearby towns in southeastern New Brunswick have become the province’s fastest growing and most prosperous communities. Provincial assessors say this is driving up property values.

CBC – CBC

Natural Disasters

Fort McMurray got burned – and water bombed

It has been more than nine months since a wildfire raced through Fort McMurray and incinerated everything in its path. Neighbourhoods left in ruins are bustling with construction. It won’t be long before houses are rebuilt and normalcy returns for some victims of the worst natural disaster in Canadian history.

Globe and Mail

Construction

Pace of new home construction rises in February

The pace of home construction in Canada picked up last month and a lot of the push came from Ontario, the federal housing agency said, offering the latest evidence the economy is building momentum. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said February’s seasonally adjusted rate for housing starts was 210,207 units, up from 208,934 in January and above expectations of 200,000 units.

Toronto Star

Wood midrise structures part of ‘the missing middle’

Quality of construction, ease and speed of assembly, along with building costs, are factors architects must carefully evaluate when preparing designs for a new breed of all-wood midrise residential developments in Ontario, says Marco VanderMaas, director of design at Q4 Architects Inc., a Toronto residential architectural firm.

Daily Commercial News

Affordable Housing

Gov’ts fund Cambridge affordable housing project

A Cambridge affordable housing project has received $4.2 million in federal and provincial funding to help build a 34-unit, five-storey apartment complex. Cambridge MP Bryan May called the project “vital” and said it will create jobs and homes for residents who need it most. 

CBC

Alberta investing in new Edmonton apartment building

The Alberta government is investing in a new 70-unit Edmonton apartment building. The province said about 230 people will live in the building and is part of $14 million the government is putting up for affordable housing in Parkdale and for the Capital Region Housing Corp., which will manage the building.

Global News

Code Red aims to make Toronto housing affordable

Yared Mehzenta has no student debt, a full-time job with the provincial government, and splits his monthly rent with a roommate. But the 28-year-old might just rent “forever.” Code Red is a new campaign from Generation Squeeze — an organization advocating for Canadians in their 20s, 30s and 40s feeling the sting of lower pay and higher housing costs.

CBC – Bloomberg

Vancouver’s mayor is ready to fight for affordable homes

It was the plaintive voices of young middle-class dreamers, including a couple of his own children, that finally got Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson to say enough. Robertson’s recent speech to a group of planners, developers and architects may go down as the most important of his time in office, which is closing in on eight years.

Globe and Mail

Editorial: Victoria mobile homes squeezed out

Residents of a mobile-home community are facing eviction, more victims of the land squeeze that is making affordable housing harder to find. What will happen to these residents as they are pushed out, in some cases losing the value of their homes, and are forced to find new places to live?

Victoria Times Colonist

Cities, Towns and Urban Issues

Sask. rural municipalities ‘won’t stand’ for amalgamation

Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM), which represents Saskatchewan’s rural municipalities, continues to oppose amalgamation, even as rural populations dwindle and its members work to save money in the face of an expected decline in provincial revenue-sharing funds next year.

Regina Leader-Post

Reeling Vancouver renters have law on their side: Advocate

Some West End Vancouver tenants are facing a 42 per cent rent increase this year, but one housing advocate says he believes the increase may not pass muster in court. Russ Godfrey, who has worked with the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre and the Residential Tenancy Branch of B.C., said there are legal precedents that favour the tenants.

CBC – CBC – Vancouver Sun

Saint John adopts new building code to spur growth

Saint John is adopting the most recent standards of the National Building Code, allowing taller structures to go up with cheaper materials, with the hopes of attracting projects and people to the uptown core. “. . . it allows developers that are looking at building new buildings the ability to add a couple more floors,” said Keith Brideau of Historica Developments.

CBC

Regina ponders new local improvement program

The City of Regina is looking at a new program where neighbours can share the costs of things they don’t have right now — like street lights or paved alleys. The yet-to-be-approved plan is called local improvements and it would apply to new infrastructure only — not replacements. That means people who’ve never had a sidewalk on their street might finally get one.

CBC

“Downzoning’ not the way to save Vancouver character homes: City planner

Vancouver is abandoning one possible major incentive for preserving character homes after receiving negative comments about the affect on property values. Chief city planner Gil Kelley told council on Tuesday that staff heard strong disapproval of “downzoning,” the idea of reducing the allowable size of new homes in certain neighbourhoods in order to discourage demolition of pre-1940s homes.

Vancouver Sun – CBC – Globe and Mail

Other