A wave of change is sweeping through the profession of city planning. A staff report going before council’s Planning and Housing Committee signals real changes coming to the city’s house-centric neighbourhoods. The report is the boldest and most progressive planning policy to emerge from city hall since the amalgamation of Toronto in 1998, where zoning rules expressly forbids anything except detached homes. The plan suggests “multiplexes” – buildings with two, three, four or more apartments to be allowed on the leafy streets where they are currently forbidden…

After a battle between the city and province that's lasted for decades, Toronto will soon require developers to build affordable units in new condo buildings in an attempt to add thousands of homes below market value in the coming years. Councillors voted 23 to 2 to use a new power called inclusionary zoning, which allows the city to compel developers to make five to 10 per cent of units affordable in new towers within 500 metres of major transit stations starting in September 2022. That percentage will increase to eight to 22 per cent by 2030, depending on the neighbourhood…

Canadians are scrambling to get mortgage pre-approvals and rate holds before the era of low interest rates comes to an end, as some economists predict. Real estate and mortgage brokers say their clients are increasingly seeking ways to hold on to current rates because many housing markets like Toronto are facing heated conditions making it hard to keep purchase prices down…

Prospective homebuyers in the Greater Toronto Area found dramatically fewer homes on the market last month than they did a year ago. October was another record setting month for Toronto and the GTA with the average year-over-year selling price up 19.3% to $1,155,345. The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board said that 9,783 homes in the region changed hands last month, down nearly 7% from a record 10,503 in October 2020. Despite the fall, the result was still the second highest level for the month of October even as the number of new listings fell by about third compared with a year ago…

Investors who own multiple properties within the city, has in recent years overtaken first-time homebuyers as the biggest slice of Toronto’s home-purchasing market, according to a recent report by Teranet.

As recently as 2016, Teranet — Ontario’s title search and registration provider, found the most common kind of person purchasing a Toronto home was a first-time buyer. But from 2016 to 2018, things changed. Multiple-home owners — a group that includes real estate investors as well as those who own a vacation home like a cottage — became the most common kind of homebuyer throughout the city. This year, between January and August, Teranet found that multiple-property owners made up 29 per cent of Toronto purchases, nudging first-time buyers at 28.5 per cent…

Almost one in five first-time home buyers is getting financial help from parents, and the average amount of that help is $150,000. If you’re wondering how first-time buyers can afford the down payments required to get into the housing market today, these numbers, drawn from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce client database offer some insight…

September marked the transition from the slower summer market to the busier fall market in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Every year, we generally see an uptick in sales, average selling price and listings after Labour Day, and September was no different. Sales increased relative to August, and in September, 9,046 sales were logged through MLS, making it the third-highest mark on record for the month of September. The 905 area of the GTA represented the majority of the sales, with 5,649 transactions…

Canadians are changing provinces at the fastest rate since the 90’s real estate bubble. Canadians haven’t fled their province in such a large volume in over three decades. Interprovincial migration reached 123,500 people in Q2 2021. This is an increase of 55.1% from the previous quarter, and the largest migration since Q3 1991. That was smack in the middle of the last affordability crisis, and the end of the early 1990s real estate bubble. Migration and quality of life improvements tend to go hand in hand…