If you bought a house before the coronavirus crisis hit, don’t expect force majeure to save you FINANCIAL POST MARCH 28, 2020 Real estate transactions, even at the best of times, are complicated and stressful for buyers and sellers. For the thousands of people who made or received firm offers before the coronavirus outbreak changed everything […]
Globe & Mail March 11 2020 Every financial market you can think of is in an uproar right now, but not Toronto real estate. Sales of houses and condos for the first week of March were up 47 per cent over the same period last year and average prices rose 18 per cent, said John Pasalis, […]
Unstoppable condo sales put Toronto market at risk of overheating: CMHC TORONTO STAR – JOSH RUBIN FEBRUARY 20, 2020 The real estate market in the Toronto area is in danger of overheating, with condos driving much of the momentum, according to a new report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The CMHC’s quarterly market assessment, […]
UPDATE: Their stock is tanking… while their competitor’s soars… Forbes 2020/1/22 Purplebricks Canada has offered its employees paid days off in exchange for made up positive reviews on Facebook and Google. In an email sent by Purplebricks Canada marketing department to the company’s whole 200-people staff, exclusively obtained by this reporter, the online estate agent […]
Ontario’s home warranty agency ‘favoured the interests of builders at the expense of homebuyers’ Tarion, Ontario’s home warranty agency, has failed thousands of new homebuyers by placing the interests of builders ahead of theirs, according to a scathing report tabled by Bonnie Lysyk, the province’s auditor general. Tarion is supposed to ensure builders honour their warranties […]
Buyers of Liberty Developments’ cancelled Cosmos condos have lost their application to have their purchase agreements on the pre-construction units declared unlawful by an Ontario Superior Court of Justice. In his ruling, Justice Michael Penny sided with the developers but found that voiding the contract would not be in the purchasers’ or the developers’ best […]
March is Fraud Prevention Month and the Better Business Bureau has released the Top 10 Scams of 2018. 1. Romance Scams More than $22.5 million lost Canadians were victimized financially, emotionally, psychologically and socially by this scam. Catphishing through online dating continues to be a very lucrative and seductive business for scammers. Never wire or […]
How does paying 6.59 per cent interest on a mortgage grab you? If that sounds high, it should, because Canada’s average five-year fixed mortgage is only 3.47 per cent. Yet thousands of seniors will pay that higher 6.59 per cent in a reverse mortgage, a loan secured against home equity where you make no payments […]
Under the old residential tenancy rules, a landlord could reject a prospective tenant if they had a pet. I would suggest to clients that if they wanted the landlord to accept their pet, they could legally offer up a pet damage deposit to move the landlord from a “no” to a “yes”. It was legal […]
Toronto City Council has passed new rules to crack down on short-term rental services such as Airbnb that will restrict listings to principal residences and ban homeowners from listing secondary suites such as basement apartments. The basement-apartment issue dominated what snowballed into a daylong debate at city hall. Banning them from short-term rentals was meant […]
With a sigh and hesitant pause, Jason Paris confides that in retrospect he wishes he’d done more research before putting down a deposit on the now-defunct Museum FLTS condominium project in Toronto’s trendy Junction Triangle area. The 43-year-old television production manager is one of hundreds of would-be homeowners who recently had their money returned and […]
PayPal has been ordered to provide the Canada Revenue Agency with information about its business account holders. The company says a Federal Court order requires it to supply information about business accounts that received or sent a payment between Jan. 1, 2014, and Nov. 10, 2017. It is not required to provide information about customers […]
More than 1,000 planned purpose-built rental units have instead been converted to condominiums in the Greater Toronto Area since Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government expanded rent control in the spring, according to a new report that warns the region’s rental supply crisis is poised to worsen. The report, which is to be released on Monday and was obtained […]
Intense competition means condos are being rented within 10 days of listing at average rents of $2,219 Ontario’s expanded rent control rules, in place since April, couldn’t stop a 10.3% hike in condo rents over the past year, according to a new study. Condo research firm Urbanation Inc. said Thursday the average index rent in the […]
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 […]
