Quinte region’s dire shortage of housing supply shows no signs of improving leaving many buyers locked out of home ownership, says Don McColl, president of the Quinte and District Association of Realtors.
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In a report to Belleville’s Economic and Destination Development Committee Thursday, McColl said a severe shortage of property listings can in not meet the demand of potential purchasers vying to enter the market.
“Real estate is moving along just like it has been for the past couple of years. It doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all, the only thing is that if you look at the numbers for February 2022 compared to February 2021 the situation just seems to be getting worse,” McColl said.
“The number of listings are down, the number of sales are down, the total number of listings are down but of course, the average price keeps going up. The average price for February was almost $770,000,” he said. “If you look back to 2019, the average price was $338,000.”
McColl told EDDC members in a virtual meeting there were at the end February only 226 houses listed for sale on the board as compared to 750 listings for the same period in 2019.
High prices, multiple offers in many cases from the Greater Toronto Area and lack of supply has put many homes entirely out of reach, especially for first–time home buyers.
Coun. Sean Kelly, chair of the EDDC, told members he spoke with a local man who earns six figures and still can’t buy into the housing market.
Kelly said, “his reality in 2022 is that he can’t afford a home.”
McColl agreed, saying “I see it every day. I have three different buyers who are looking and we’ve been looking for a year and a half and they, you know, run into 18 to 20 offers and they’re all cash offers and they need to get financing and they just can’t compete,” McColl said.
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“Unless something changes on the supply side or on the demand side, I think it’s going to take a while to get more houses built, that seems to be a slow process. The provincial and federal governments don’t seem to be going down the same path but we need to get all levels of government on the same path to help that out.”
McColl said increasing immigration in the last four or five years has pushed demand to record levels without increasing supply.
Coun. Kelly McCaw said “a great majority are coming from larger areas and as a result I think what we are seeing is local residents are finding it tougher times to find property and be able to secure property.”
McCaw asked if many of the selling agents are from the GTA but McColl said, “we don’t have actual firm stats on it.”
McColl said in his personal professional experience of late, most buyers of homes in Quinte have been from Greater Toronto.
“Actually, most of the buyers I’ve had in the last year and half have been from the GTA or Ottawa is the second largest,” he said.
Many first-time buyers have not been able to buy in the last two years, he said.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
