Pension funds flock to apartment buildings

Rental rush: pension funds flock to apartment buildings After the financial crisis battered the U.S. economy in 2008 and 2009, the real estate investing team at Quebec’s public-sector pension manager noticed an interesting trend in its portfolio of holdings. The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec owned a group of apartment buildings in New […]

CRA going after condo flippers with court orders….

A Federal Court judge has approved at least one court order that will require a British Columbia developer to turn over information to tax officials about people who bought and flipped condo units before or during construction. And several similar applications are under way, reflecting the federal government’s efforts to crack down on potential tax […]

Bully offers are back in Toronto..

Toronto’s real estate market is showing renewed strength, with bidding contests and bully offers making a resurgence after a torpid summer. David Fleming of Bosley Real Estate Ltd. was caught off guard when he took his clients to see a house in the Beaches area and soon learned that a bully offer had landed. “I didn’t think it would […]

Have Toronto prices hit bottom?

Toronto’s roller-coaster real estate market took a swoop lower in August, the fourth-straight month that the average sales price in Canada’s largest city declined from a dizzying record high set in April. The Toronto Real Estate Board said Wednesday the average price for all home types in the Greater Toronto Area last month was $732,292, […]

Using your principal residence as a rental..

Q: I bought a house in 2010 for $600,000 and lived in that house as my principal residence until 2013.  Then I bought and moved into another property. I rented out the first house and reported all income on my tax returns. In 2016, I sold the rental property for $900,000. When I file my […]

Toronto sellers frustrated with buyers’ demands

Some home sellers in Toronto are finding the buyers of their homes are trying to renegotiate the deals just days before closing. In this rapidly cooling real estate market, some buyers seem to be regretting how much they agreed to pay back in the hot spring sales season. In other cases, buyers aren’t able to […]

What slowdown? Toronto and Vancouver are still hot markets

With recent price declines in Canada’s hot real estate markets, there’s been talk of a slowdown. But, so far, it’s hardly something for prospective buyers to get excited about.  While prices did drop after the introduction of a foreign homebuyers’ tax in Vancouver last year, they’re once again surging to new highs.  In Toronto, both […]

Condo market shows resiliency..

2017 has been a turbulent year for the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) housing market, with the Ontario government’s Fair Housing Plan ushering in a frenzied wave of transactions, now being followed by a steep decline in sales. Despite the turmoil, new figures released by the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) show that while overall home sales declined […]

Tax changes and the small business world…

Tim Cestnick July 21, 2017 Ever since the 2017 federal budget in March, when the government announced that tax changes affecting private corporations would be coming, I’ve been feeling queasy. Well, the proposed tax changes were announced by Bill Morneau, the Finance Minister, on Tuesday. And ugly they are. Here’s a primer on the potential […]

Upside of the housing downturn…

Royal LePage CEO Phil Soper says that, like a lot of chief executives, he is prone to optimism. But that didn’t stop him from calling Toronto the least healthy housing market in the country when prices were galloping ahead in the double digits in the first quarter of the year, peaking at 33 per cent year over year […]

Mortgage fraud thriving in Canada..

In early 2013, Kelly Vandenham and her boyfriend were preparing to put an offer on a charming Craftsman-style house in West Kelowna, B.C. They had been pre-approved for a mortgage with Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, but the couple’s realtor suggested they could get a lower interest rate at Toronto-Dominion Bank, where their realtor’s boyfriend, […]

When a detached home isn’t really detached..

‘Detached’ home for sale is actually linked to property next door Bob Aaron Toronto Star June 7, 2017 After signing an agreement, a couple found out their house was connected underground to their neighbour. When is a detached house not detached? That was the question facing the “Smiths” late last month. The couple came to see […]

Non Resident Speculation Tax

Although the Province has just announced the 15% Non-Resident Speculation tax, there are already more questions than answers. Here is what you need to know: 1. The tax is for non-residents of Canada buying 1-6 residential units in the Golden Horseshoe area of Ontario. This tax is in addition to any Land Transfer Tax payable. […]

Toronto demographics…

The Toronto Region’s population base is one of the fastest growing in Canada; growth between 2001 and 2014 equalled 87% of the total population of Calgary in 2015. More than half of the global population (54%) now lives in cities, and by 2050 it is expected to grow to 66%. Toronto has more than twice the proportion of recent […]

Greenbelts make cities more livable

A number of Canadians have argued recently that urban growth boundaries, such as greenbelts, ought to be abolished on the grounds that they can negatively affect housing affordability. This claim is largely based the argument, by a British economist, that the greenbelt surrounding London is at least partly to blame for new home prices being […]