Toronto Condo Prices Down 9% from Peak - Recent news articles about Toronto’s condo market range from pessimistic to optimistic leaving many wondering what exactly is happening. In early October condo listings surged 215% in downtown Toronto, while a couple of weeks later an article titled “Toronto condo prices rise over 8% even as new listings surge”.
How is it that our stock markets and house prices look like this is the best of times? Many people have been scratching their heads lately trying to understand how it is that Canada’s average house price jumped more than 17 per cent during the worst economic crisis to hit the world in decades. There is an answer, but to get to it, you have to learn the same uncomfortable lesson that the head of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. learned this year. And that lesson is that we are living in an illusion created by central bank money-printing and excessive government spending. If house prices seem detached from reality, it’s because they are.
Housing lot sizes continue to shrink. There are many attractions of suburban houses, but one of the key selling points was that as you move out of the city you will get more land and more backyard. Think again. That metric is under stress in Canada’s most populous region, and new buyers are finding that the average lot size is shrinking.