Toronto Real Estate

Find out what the experts think the market will likely be in 5, 10, or 20 years.  The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) is hosting its 2008 series of "Housing Outlook Conferences" in (and about) these Canadian urban centres: Quebec: Montreal and Quebec Ontario: Hamilton, Kitchener, L...

On the heels of the Bank of Canada's announcement to cut its key overnight rate by half a percentage point (50 points, or 0.5%) to 2.5%, the big Canadian banks are also cutting their prime rate to 4.5% -- a reduction of only 25 points, no longer following the central bank in lockstep fashion. I'm...

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has released the results of its 2007 Renovation and Home Purchase Survey. Across these 10 major centres, (estimated) renovation spending in 2007 was up $2 billion from the previous year, to $19.7B.  That's an average of $12,800 per household! In Toronto...

Mid-month numbers have been crunched and it's a mixed bag of news from the Toronto Real Estate Board, although one could argue that there's a positive spin to it. In the GTA, compared to the first half of May 2007, the first half of this month saw a 12% decline in the number of sales.  However, s...

It's  a simple question with no one simple answer.  The state of the market depends on what you're comparing it to:  yesterday, last week, the previous month, the same month a year ago, year to date vs the same period last year, etc.  2007 was unquestionably a phenomenal year (lots of records bro...

On this last day of REALTOR Quest, I attended a couple of green housing (residential) seminars -- "Green Housing 101" and "Tips on Greening a Fixer-Upper" -- presented by Mark Salerno (with CMHC) and Chris Chopik (with Bosley Real Estate).  While there's some overlap in material, there's a lot of...

I'm back from day one of REALTOR Quest 2008.  Wasn't that fun? Tod Maffin was this year's keynote speaker -- entertaining, energetic, and full of Web 2.0 evangelism in his presentation, "Future of Technology in the Real Estate Business".  Among his many messages: marketing has evolved from broad ...

Resales activity for April '08 was described as "moderate" by the Toronto Real Estate Board in its latest market report, but looking at the numbers, we see: number of transactions down 7% from April '07 overall in Toronto, the number of transactions was down 10% outside Toronto, the number of tra...

As analysts have increasingly speculated or expected in recent weeks, the Bank of Canada lowered the benchmark overnight rate target by half a percentage point, from 3.5% to 3.0%.Driving the rate cut announcement, the central bank cited the weakening global enconomy, the sharp slowdown in the U.S...

Mid-month figures have been released and the numbers point to another consecutive month decline in the Greater Toronto Area -- and this time, the weather can't be blamed.  First, the bad news:Overall, the GTA saw a 5% decline over the same period in April 2007.The 416 (Toronto) saw an 11% decline...