This year was a rollercoaster for real estate in the city. Prices reached unprecedented highs before giving way to hiked interest rates and a buyer’s market. The cost of everything forced renters and owners alike to get creative: hacking the game with savvy moves, building new stock in laneways and backyards, upgrading existing homes with stunning design.
Still, the housing crisis persists with no end in sight. Inflation, landlord-tenant feuds, renovictions, loose laws and developer impropriety have pushed many Torontonians to the edge.
It’s enough to make any rational person pack up and leave. And plenty did. But, for the devout Torontonians among us, not for long. Indeed, 2022 was the year of the great return, in which many pandemic nomads finally came back home. Even in the face of real-estate market insanity, they missed Toronto’s energy, culture and, above all, its people.
Here are Toronto Life’s most popular real estate stories from the past year.
Truro-born Wayne Burns faced an impossible task of transforming a doll-house-size unit into actual home. His strategy (with a little help from Mom): use clothing tubs, hang clothes in an exposed piping system and sell some records to buy a sleeper couch. | Iris Benaroia | February 10
Anjali Rego, Dickson D’Souza and their two daughters were sure they had found a great starter home by the Cooksville GO station—but it needed a lot of work. So, to save money, they did most of the reno work themselves on evenings and weekends. Here’s how that panned out. | Ali Amad | May 11
Models Daniel and Madison Liu wanted to work in Toronto but also own a spacious family home. That led them to buying a quaint fixer-upper church in the southwestern village of Paisley. Here’s what happened next. | Andrea Yu | February 17
The newly legalized construction of laneway suites has been touted by housing advocates as an essential tool to conquer the affordability crisis. Retired event planner Kasey Watson saw the shift as a way to take care of her brother. | Andrea Yu | April 29
As a working couple with three young children, Jessica and Phillip were desperate to find a family home. How about a three-bed, three-bath in Thunder Bay for $219,000? While tempting, it would mean leaving their friends and family in Toronto. | Andrea Yu | February 24
When planning retirement, many couples downsize to a condo or perhaps jettison to the suburbs. Karen Craine and Franz Hartmann instead chose a different route, building a completely new home in their backyard and renting it out as a pension. | Ethan Rotberg | January 27
Kathleen O’Connor grew up in Oshawa without much money, yet she and her family cherished vacations in nature. So, one day, she bought her grandfather’s old Algonquin cottage as a new destination for her young family. | Kathleen O’Connor | May 20
Joanne Sparrow had enough of commuting downtown from Oakville and being away from her daughter. Then she solved both problems by landing a new home in a small-town church. | Andrea Yu | January 21
They traded city life for more square footage elsewhere. Then what? In a nutshell, they hated it—and they’re moving back. Here are their stories. | October 25
What happens when you flee Toronto for Alberta and then realize that everything you love about your life didn’t move with you? You move back home, just as Jackie Thomas did in 2022. | Jackie Thomas | December 13
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.
MONTREAL – The Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers says Montreal-area home sales rose 9.3 per cent in August compared with the same month last year, with levels slightly higher than the historical average for this time of year.
The association says home sales in the region totalled 2,991 for the month, up from 2,737 in August 2023.
The median price for all housing types was up year-over-year, led by a six per cent increase for the price of a plex at $763,000 last month.
The median price for a single-family home rose 5.2 per cent to $590,000 and the median price for a condominium rose 4.4 per cent to $407,100.
QPAREB market analysis director Charles Brant says the strength of the Montreal resale market contrasts with declines in many other Canadian cities struggling with higher levels of household debt, lower savings and diminishing purchasing power.
Active listings for August jumped 18 per cent compared with a year earlier to 17,200, while new listings rose 1.7 per cent to 4,840.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 6, 2024.
