Real eState
The Toronto ‘condo comeback’ is here to stay, real estate analysts say – Global News
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the red-hot housing market saw a frenzy of demand for single-family homes and cottages as buyers sought more space, away from urban cores. Smaller apartments in downtown Toronto languished on the market.
But the tides began to turn in 2021.
According to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board’s (TRREB) latest data, condo apartment sales soared 155 per cent year-over-year during the spring quarter and the average selling price rose 10.8 per cent during the same timeframe.
“A lot of that has to do with first-time home buyer activity. Younger households were a little bit slower to recover or bounce back from the initial phase of the pandemic,” Jason Mercer, TRREB’s chief market analyst, tells Global News.
He says the real estate board conducted polling regarding buying intentions at the end of 2020, which found that 40 per cent of the respondents who said they wanted to purchase a home this year were going to be first-time home buyers.
Analysts say new entrants into the housing market are just the first leg of the condo comeback story.
Data from Urbanation’s second-quarter Condominium Market Survey, released Tuesday, shows that the Greater Toronto Area’s new condo market fully recovered from its COVID-19 lull and has since returned to near record-high sales volumes. Urbanation says the so-called “905” — areas beyond Toronto’s downtown — continued to be a driving force as developers and buyers shifted to more affordable options.
“The spotlight has shifted back on the condo market,” Urbanation president Shaun Hildebrand said in an emailed statement to Global News. “Condos are experiencing a rebound in demand as single-family home prices have risen out of reach for many buyers while the reopening of the economy is bringing more people back into the city.”
Hildebrand says he expects prices to climb in the near term because new condo inventory in the Toronto area is at a three-year low.
The condo recovery in Metro Vancouver has been more muted, with apartment sales up 19 per cent year-over-year in July according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV). But condo prices followed the trend of the region’s overall housing prices and dipped slightly between June and July.
New condos are showing signs of a rebound, though. According to real estate research firm MLA Canada, 3,000 pre-sale condos were released within 20 new projects in June, which marks the highest level since November 2018.
Mercer says prices are poised to rise in Toronto’s condo segment. He expects a bigger increase when international borders fully reopen and immigration, based on federal targets to welcome more than 400,000 newcomers annually between 2021 and 2023, resumes.
“The Greater Toronto Area will continue to be Canada’s single greatest metropolitan beneficiary of that population growth and all of these people are going to require a place to live,” says Mercer.
He says greater planning will be required from all levels of government because the housing supply issues, specifically the so-called “missing middle,” that existed pre-pandemic have not been addressed.
American architect Daniel Parolek is credited with coming up with the term the “missing middle” to describe a range of housing types that fall, in terms of density, somewhere between a detached house and a mid-rise building. These types of buildings are said to be missing from major cities, including Toronto and Vancouver, in recent decades.
“If we want to see sustained affordability over the long term, we need to see more housing supply,” says Mercer. “We also need to see a greater diversity of housing supply, so more bridging the gap between traditional single-family homes and condominium apartments.”
© 2021 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Real eState
Botched home sale costs Winnipeg man his right to sell real estate in Manitoba – CBC.ca
A Winnipeg man’s registration as a real estate salesman has been cancelled after a family vacated their home on a tight deadline for a sale that never went through, then changed brokerages and, months later, got $60,000 less for their house than what they expected when they moved out.
A Manitoba Securities Commission panel found Reginald Wayne Kehler engaged in professional misconduct and conduct unbecoming a registrant when he signed a document on behalf of sellers without their knowledge, reduced the listing price of a home without their approval, and didn’t tell them for nearly a month that a potential buyer hadn’t paid a promised $100,000 deposit.
The sellers, identified as D.R. and P.R. in the panel decision released Wednesday, were awarded $10,394 from the real estate reimbursement fund. Kehler was ordered to pay $12,075 to cover costs of the investigation and hearing.
The sellers were a military family who had to move in 2020 after the husband was posted to Ottawa.
They chose Kehler as their listing agent, because he had helped them find the home when they moved to Winnipeg in 2018, and they had a good relationship with him, the panel’s decision says.
They listed their house in May and on June 15, 2020, accepted an offer of $570,000 with possession on July 15. A deposit of $100,000 was to be paid within 72 hours of acceptance of the offer.
Kehler was the salesperson for both the buyer and the sellers — but the sellers say he never told them that.
A form that indicated the sellers knew he was also representing the buyer, dated June 15, 2020, was filed.
While it appeared to be signed with the sellers’ names, they said they didn’t see it until March 2021. One of the two wasn’t even in Winnipeg on June 15.
“Kehler, in his interview with commission staff, acknowledges that the sellers never signed this document — we note that the purported signatures on the form look nothing like the actual signatures of the sellers on other documents,” the decision says.
Kehler told commission staff he’d been authorized to sign on the sellers’ behalf, which they denied. The panel found them more believable.
Once the deal was made, the sellers, believing they had just a month before the buyer would take possession of their home, quickly packed up and prepared to move with their two young children.
Buyer never made deposit
Meanwhile, the buyer hadn’t made the $100,000 deposit before the deadline — but Kehler didn’t tell the sellers.
Kehler told commission staff that was because he thought the deposit was still coming, and he didn’t want to cause more stress for the sellers.
On July 10, just five days before the buyer was to take possession and the day before the family was leaving Winnipeg, the sellers spoke to Kehler — but he still didn’t tell them the deposit hadn’t been paid.
Kehler “said everything was fine,” according to the decision.
It wasn’t until the evening of July 13, when the family arrived in Toronto on their way to Ottawa and just 36 hours before the scheduled closing, that Kehler told them he’d never received the deposit.
Eventually, they received $4,000 of the deposit, but the sale of the house never closed. The sellers scrambled to extend the insurance on their old home and make sure they continued to pay the utility bills, the decision says.
Home relisted
Kehler then recommended they relist the home, and it went back on the market at $574,900.
On Aug. 10, 2020, Kehler recommended the price be reduced to $569,900. Instead, the seller said he should reduce the price to $567,900.
But when the seller looked at the online listing on Aug. 22, it was listed at $564,900.
The sellers also asked Kehler about maintaining the property, since they were no longer in Winnipeg. He agreed he would, but friends ended up going and mowing the lawn, the decision says.
The sellers asked Kehler and his brokerage about what could be done to “make things right,” the decision says, but they never received any responses.
On Sept. 5, they hired a new brokerage to sell the home. Under the new real estate salesman, they accepted an offer on Dec. 13, and closed the deal Jan. 2, 2021, receiving $507,500 for the home.
Kehler’s actions were “contrary to the best interests of the public” and undermined “public confidence in the real estate industry,” the decision says.
Real eState
Dr. Phil left speechless after real estate agent claims that squatting is justified by colonization – New York Post
Dr. Phil spoke with property owners about how squatters are using legal loopholes to occupy properties, but one real estate agent argued it can be justified because of a history of “colonization.”
Wednesday’s episode of “Dr. Phil Primetime” featured one guest named Kristine, a real estate agent who “doesn’t think adverse possession is immoral,” but believes that “people with no housing dying from the elements is immoral.” According to the Legal Information Institute, adverse possession is where a “person in possession of land owned by someone else may acquire valid title to it, so long as certain requirements are met, and the adverse possessor is in possession for a sufficient period of time.” The requirements and period of time vary by state and city.
In her introduction on the show, Kristine argued that there are “multi-million dollar projects, and they’re just abandoned.” She added that she believes the land of those abandoned projects can be reclaimed.
She also noted she is working with a client who is “trying to occupy a property” that’s around 300 or 500 acres.
“It’s something that’s so large that you wouldn’t even notice what 2 acres is compared to how many acres are on there,” she said. “Adverse possession is a law that’s left over from both Spanish and English colonization, it is how they took the land from the native people, and it’s a process we can use to take that land back.”
“You said that if I’ve got 100 acres or 1,000 acres and somebody goes and gets in a corner of it and adversely possesses 5 acres of it, I’m not gonna miss it, I’ve got 1,000 acres anyway?” Dr. Phil asked Kristine.
“Well, yeah,” she responded. “Can you tell me, if you’re looking at 1,000 acres, could you tell me what 5 acres was?”
Dr. Phil’s jaw dropped, and he said, “Hell yes.”
A landlord named Tony argued with Kristine about how she believes the manner in which people inherit property should be taken into account when it comes to adverse possession.
“We’re not in 1776, we’re in 2024,” Tony said, sparking a wave of applause from the audience.
“Do you think that a corporation that makes over a billion dollars a year is injured by someone taking 5 acres of land?,” Kristine argued.
Another guest quickly interjected with “somebody is.”
Another guest named Patti confronted Kristine by arguing she does not use her car 24-hours-a-day.
“Playing out your scenario, then theoretically anyone on the street should be able to boost your car and drive it, because that car is just sitting around unused,” Patti said, sparking applause from the audience.
“I don’t have a billion-dollar net worth,” Kristine argued, which made Barry ask if having a billion dollars is where Kristine draws the line.
Dr. Phil concluded the episode by commending Kristine for her willingness to defend her beliefs, but said he “100%” disagreed with her.
“It is a lawful thing to do if you do it in the right way, I 100% disagree with your philosophy, but your facts are correct,” he said. “She’s not suggesting people go squat in someone’s home when they go on vacation, she’s talking about something completely different, at another level, and if you’re not a billionaire, she isn’t targeting you.”
Real eState
Botched home sale costs Winnipeg man his right to sell real estate in Manitoba – CBC.ca
A Winnipeg man’s registration as a real estate salesman has been cancelled after a family vacated their home on a tight deadline for a sale that never went through, then changed brokerages and, months later, got $60,000 less for their house than what they expected when they moved out.
A Manitoba Securities Commission panel found Reginald Wayne Kehler engaged in professional misconduct and conduct unbecoming a registrant when he signed a document on behalf of sellers without their knowledge, reduced the listing price of a home without their approval, and didn’t tell them for nearly a month that a potential buyer hadn’t paid a promised $100,000 deposit.
The sellers, identified as D.R. and P.R. in the panel decision released Wednesday, were awarded $10,394 from the real estate reimbursement fund. Kehler was ordered to pay $12,075 to cover costs of the investigation and hearing.
The sellers were a military family who had to move in 2020 after the husband was posted to Ottawa.
They chose Kehler as their listing agent, because he had helped them find the home when they moved to Winnipeg in 2018, and they had a good relationship with him, the panel’s decision says.
They listed their house in May and on June 15, 2020, accepted an offer of $570,000 with possession on July 15. A deposit of $100,000 was to be paid within 72 hours of acceptance of the offer.
Kehler was the salesperson for both the buyer and the sellers — but the sellers say he never told them that.
A form that indicated the sellers knew he was also representing the buyer, dated June 15, 2020, was filed.
While it appeared to be signed with the sellers’ names, they said they didn’t see it until March 2021. One of the two wasn’t even in Winnipeg on June 15.
“Kehler, in his interview with commission staff, acknowledges that the sellers never signed this document — we note that the purported signatures on the form look nothing like the actual signatures of the sellers on other documents,” the decision says.
Kehler told commission staff he’d been authorized to sign on the sellers’ behalf, which they denied. The panel found them more believable.
Once the deal was made, the sellers, believing they had just a month before the buyer would take possession of their home, quickly packed up and prepared to move with their two young children.
Buyer never made deposit
Meanwhile, the buyer hadn’t made the $100,000 deposit before the deadline — but Kehler didn’t tell the sellers.
Kehler told commission staff that was because he thought the deposit was still coming, and he didn’t want to cause more stress for the sellers.
On July 10, just five days before the buyer was to take possession and the day before the family was leaving Winnipeg, the sellers spoke to Kehler — but he still didn’t tell them the deposit hadn’t been paid.
Kehler “said everything was fine,” according to the decision.
It wasn’t until the evening of July 13, when the family arrived in Toronto on their way to Ottawa and just 36 hours before the scheduled closing, that Kehler told them he’d never received the deposit.
Eventually, they received $4,000 of the deposit, but the sale of the house never closed. The sellers scrambled to extend the insurance on their old home and make sure they continued to pay the utility bills, the decision says.
Home relisted
Kehler then recommended they relist the home, and it went back on the market at $574,900.
On Aug. 10, 2020, Kehler recommended the price be reduced to $569,900. Instead, the seller said he should reduce the price to $567,900.
But when the seller looked at the online listing on Aug. 22, it was listed at $564,900.
The sellers also asked Kehler about maintaining the property, since they were no longer in Winnipeg. He agreed he would, but friends ended up going and mowing the lawn, the decision says.
The sellers asked Kehler and his brokerage about what could be done to “make things right,” the decision says, but they never received any responses.
On Sept. 5, they hired a new brokerage to sell the home. Under the new real estate salesman, they accepted an offer on Dec. 13, and closed the deal Jan. 2, 2021, receiving $507,500 for the home.
Kehler’s actions were “contrary to the best interests of the public” and undermined “public confidence in the real estate industry,” the decision says.
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