A recent Toronto home sale has residents fuming over the city’s housing market despite the fact that the property sold for less than the asking price and well under $1 million, which is almost unheard of for a detached house in the city.
It is the size of the detached house in question that has people venting about the exorbitant price of our real estate this week, as the selling price of $846,000 — a steal in a city where the average price of a standalone home is $1.57 million — seems way too high for what the buyer got.
It looks like the current tenants had a hard time fitting all of their stuff in. Photo from Right At Home Realty via Strata.ca.
Located near Vaughan Road and Oakwood Avenue in Oakwood Village, the house isn’t by any means dilapidated, does not require any renovations in order to be livable, and could even be considered charming.
With a front yard, backyard and parking, it is technically a gem in the city for the price — that is, on paper.
Seeing photos of the home, it’s apparent why it went for a few thousand less than the listing price, and for an amount that is low for the city (a preposterously expensive “low,” mind you).
With two bathrooms and just 1+1 bedrooms, the place is visibly very cramped, and it seems that realtors may have purposely omitted its square footage from online listings.
Only noted is the size of the lot, which is slightly over 100 feet long by just 19 feet wide, amounting to 1,995 square feet total. And, given that the backyard looks quite bigger than the footprint of the house, one can only imagine how small the actual building is.
There are 1+1 bedrooms, but they both appear too tight for comfort. Photo from Right At Home Realty via Strata.ca.
While the buyer may think they got a steal, people online don’t agree, with photos of the home and its price garnering tens of thousands of responses on Instagram.
The reactions are largely of frustration over how unaffordable Toronto has become, with people paying $846k for a house the size of “a horse stall” that looks like “something you can buy on Amazon for $19k.”
“With that money you could buy a mansion in Texas,” one person noted.
“I was having a good day until this reminded me of reality,” another said.
A few chimed in to say that the person likely just paid for the (also very small) lot, and may just demolish the house and turn a profit on a new build.
But, this just further drives the point home that buying a home is way out of reach for so many in the city, and seemingly only available to wealthy investors who have no intention — or need — to actually live in the homes they scoop up.
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.
