TorontoRealtyBlog Here’s a story that risks offending those with religious views, so consider this your fair warning… Years ago, I was showing an authentic hard loft church conversion to an older, single male.  This building is about as “authentic” as they come since all kinds of stained glass features were incorporated into the condominium, as well as some stone carvings of people and faces. One such feature was left behind on the wall in the master bedroom. I’m no religious scholar, and I really don’t want to offend, so I’ll just say that there was a stained glass feature of a religious ..read more

TorontoRealtyBlog On Thursday, I couldn’t help but note a lot of stories about Canada’s population growth. Scratch that. Canada’s record population growth. Did you notice too?  Or was it just me? The CBC picked up the story: “Canada’s Population Grew By Record 1 Million In 2022, Spurred By International Migration” But of course CBC would pick up the story.  It’s huge Canadian news, um, here in Canada. But would it surprise you to know that it was a story in other places of the world? You simply can’t imagine how much play this got. From our neighbours in Amer ..read more

TorontoRealtyBlog For those of you just discovering the Canadian Real Estate Association’s Home Price Index data, let me provide a bit more context. CREA tracks the HPI for sixty areas. This includes eight provinces (doesn’t track Manitoba, Yukon, Northwest Territories, or Nunavut), twenty-nine areas within Toronto (as discussed on Monday), and then twenty-three cities, towns, and/or metropolitan areas outside of Ontario. It’s somewhat fitting that nearly half the areas for which CREA tracks the HPI are within Ontario, right?  I mean, over 40% of the population of ..read more

TorontoRealtyBlog Once again, apologies to anybody that doesn’t wake up in the morning looking for a reason to open up Microsoft Excel! This is a lot of stats for a week! But I can’t help it.  I go where the stories take me, and with the market on the rise in the 416 and home prices, in my opinion, about to skyrocket this spring, I want to look at what’s happening through the rest of the province. Skyrocket.  I said that. But don’t judge me now.  Judge me by the end of May or June when we look at 416 home prices.  Because when I look at the number of active buyers I ha ..read more

TorontoRealtyBlog That was a very interesting exercise on Wednesday! Thank you to all the readers who took part.  I’m sure we’ll continue to see votes, predictions, and opinions roll in, and I will be sure to catalogue those dates and prices so we can come back to this in a few months or years. Of course, we only looked at the GTA average home price, and whereas many want to cast the net much wider and focus on Canada, others want one of those tiny nets that our kids use, without success, to catch butterflies.  That is to say that people want to know what’s happening i ..read more

TorontoRealtyBlog You all remember Thomas, don’t you? While I’m sure Thomas prefers seabass or beef tenderloin to standard fowl, I’m sure he enjoyed his metaphoric chicken dinner in 2020 with a side of McCain Smiles… Newer readers won’t know what I’m talking about, but the veterans do, and they’re already debating whether to skim this part. After all, this would be, what, like, the fourth or fifth victory lap for Thomas? But it adds context to both today’s blog, today’s blog challenge, and of course, blog reader Derek‘s comment from last Friday. Back in April of 2018, it was blo ..read more

TorontoRealtyBlog How much would you pay to have somebody line up overnight and potentially sleep on the pavement in order to hold your place in line? Alternatively, how much would you need to be paid by somebody else to line up overnight in order to hold somebody else’s place in line? Then again, maybe you just do it yourself? The “OG” in this regard is none other than Riff Randell. Who? Riff Randell. Friend of Kate Rambeau, nemesis of Principal Togar, and Ramones super-fan. Raise your hand if you’ve seen the movie “Rock ‘n Roll High School?” This was a staple of my childhood a ..read more

TorontoRealtyBlog If there’s ever been a constant about our real estate market, it’s this: people always want to know whether it’s going up or whether it’s going down. Actually, scratch that. If there’s ever been a constant about our real estate market, it’s this: Toronto is too expensive. Actually, scratch that. Can’t it be both? Based on the comments from TRB readers so far this year, I’d say the people are pretty mixed on where market activity and prices are headed.  It seems to me that our split between bullish outlooks and bearish outlooks are about 60/40, but this is based ..read more

TorontoRealtyBlog I’ve never been one for outdoor advertising, but I suppose there’s a first time for everything, right? This week, I bought a billboard at Yonge & Dundas Square. It’s massive! Towering high above Jack Astor’s, or Milestone’s, or Pickle Barrel, or whatever chain with completely average food you consume before an 8:00pm movie, the billboard is nothing but a white background to further draw the eye to the centre of the billboard which states, in all caps, all black letters, plain as day: 3488 Quilted Rabbit Way Is An Over-Priced Townhouse And I Worry About The Sketchy Founda ..read more

TorontoRealtyBlog …we finally got a piece of the pie! I could have called this blog post, “Don’t Call It A Comeback,” but I’ve used that before.  I know this, of course, because I started writing today and it sounded quite familiar, so I actually Googled my own website and found a 2020 blog post about clauses “making a comeback,” complete with the 700-word rant about Sirius XM, 80’s hip-hop, and the brilliant lyricist himself, LL Cool J. So how about a reference from The Jeffersons then? I will admit: I’ve never seen the show.  After all, it ran from 1975 to 1985 and I was ..read more