The Changing Face of Real Estate in Toronto 2015

Video: TREB Market Report December 2014 

Source: Toronto Real Estate Board’s YouTube Channel

“The stakes are high surrounding the fortunes of the Greater Toronto Area housing market,” adds the report. “A healthy housing system is critical to a region’s economic fortunes. And with the GTA key to Canada’s economic engine, the success or failure of housing in this region carries significant national importance.”

~ TD Economics Report

Source: thestar.com Real Estate

$140,000 is a big number. And according to a TD Economics Report released Monday, it is the annual income needed to finance a single-family home in the GTA (which now costs about $740,000). Source: thestar.com Real Estate

The problem, as it turns out, is all that urban densification happening around the city (translation: the condo-crazy city).

New home sales are way down compared to new condo sales. This has led to a shortage in supply of homes and that has helped push prices up to the point where Toronto is nearing New York-like home costs. And it should not come at all as a surprise, according to George Carras, President of RealNet:

“This is a problem ten years in the making. … The desire to curb sprawl and encourage intensification has led to the continued condominium boom in the 416, spiking home prices and a widening price gap between low-rise and high-rise housing product.” 

~ George Carras, President, RealNet, Altus Group

Source: National Post

Image: Gap between low-rise homes and condo reaches all-time high of $251,337

Source: National Post

If something is not done, it is clear that more families will have to live in hi-rise condominiums. And, as it turns out, builders are responding by starting to offer larger condos (as opposed to the 400 sq. ft. variety designed for first-time buyers and young singles).

What to do? Clearly, new homes require land. No one wants to take the GTA back into the urban sprawl scenario which warranted the current urban intensification approach. And yet, it is all but impossible for entire neighbourhoods to be levelled to build new low-cost low-rise housing.  

What can be done?

PeapodLife is Changing the Face of Real Estate in Toronto in 2015

With our partner, Casavant, PeapodLife is able to offer benefits to each of the following:

•    Home buyers: a way to purchase, renovate and own a home they could otherwise not afford, complete with an indoor rainforest ecosystem.

Image By PeapodLife: BEST HOMES Process

•    Low-income Renters: newly renovated second-suites in good neighbourhoods, with their own small rainforest ecosystem included.

•    The City of Toronto: a practical way to achieve urban densification and urban renewal while reducing the load on aging infrastructure and services (PeapodLIfe BEST HOMES are more efficient, and utilize cisterns to capture and utilize precious rainwater for ecosystems instead of it running off into Toronto’s overwhelmed drainage and sewer system).

•    Real Estate Investors: an easy way to increase their return on investment.

Infographic By PeapodLife: $500K VS $2M => 4 BEST Homes w/Ecosystems

So, from our standpoint, in 2015 the BEST thing that can happen to the Toronto Real Estate market is PeapodLife. Why not contact us for more information and put your BEST foot forward in 2015.