I love headlines … sometimes.
A few days ago I saw this headline in the National Post, “Housing Grows Cheaper.” Cheaper than what … a Boeing 747?
As far I know, Toronto housing has not been cheap, from a buyer’s point of view for a very long time. Would most buyers consider a 60 year old, 700 square foot bungalow, in need of new bathrooms and kitchen priced at $550,000 cheap?
With all due respect to the Desjardins Group which produced the Desjardins Affordablity Index, buyers do not have to check this index to figure out that they simply cannot afford to enter the market at these price levels. The Desjardins report warns consumers “not to get too excited about the market conditions because affordability is still close to the record low reached in 1990.” This has not been my experience. We are still way above the 1990 “record low level.”
In today’s Toronto real estate market, the only option that many buyers have is to get into a condominium, and this is a perfectly viable solution for many of them.
However, a great number of buyers would prefer something similar to the proverbial “small house with the white picket fence” instead. And this dream seems to move farther and farther away for the majority of first time buyers.
I see signs that a saner and more balanced market is starting to emerge, especially in the overheated prime neighbourhoods in central Toronto.
Housing markets, such as the one we have all been through in Toronto in the past ten years, have always divided home buyers and sellers into winners and losers. There is no middle ground. Hopefully we are starting to enter a time where we will be able to see a smile on both buyers and sellers faces.
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