Real estate market returns to the boil
The local real estate market, which cooled briefly faced with the pandemic, is returning to the boil and prices continue to rise. Where are people getting money for houses in this economy? Beats me.
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Kate
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Uatu 10:33 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
Unfortunately, maybe from a recent inheritance
Mark 11:30 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
Real estate is a global asset class. Despite any local woes, foreign investors see Canadian housing stock as a strong, stable bet. Also, tech is minting millionaires. Shopify alone has added a thousand wealthy buyers into the Toronto/Montreal/Ottawa real-estate pool.
Myles 12:12 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
Once you’ve got a certain amount of money, you can always find some exotic investment tool to make even more off any catastrophe.
Joey 12:15 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
Prices are up because inventory is down… so for the last six weeks or so, buyers have outnumbered sellers. Anecdotally in Mile-End it seems everything that’s for sale has sold quickly and often above asking. Presumably many of those buyers “overpaid” because they had tight timelines, e.g., if they had sold their home and had to be out by a certain date. Maybe some took advantage of the excess AirBnB stock for the short-term, but I’m guessing these folks would prefer to move once, even if it meant paying more than they had anticipated. I would imagine that things will even out soon enough as more prospective sellers find themselves eager to cash in, though it’s a bit of a gamble – as great as it may seem to sell in a hot market like this, there’s not much value if you quickly become a buyer as well. Kind of an ideal moment to sell your Plateau apartment and move to the suburbs or the country…
Ephraim 12:37 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
Wonder how many realize that they won’t be able to put them on AirBnB without a permit and the city is only issuing permits for certain streets? (And I have noticed that places that were on AirBnB are going back to the condo market. But agents are still not properly disclosing the new realities… which opens them to lawsuits.) In any case, I have noticed that the Plateau is SIGNIFICANTLY up. There are three duplexes right near Prince Arthur for over $1.1M each. Not that I should complain…. The current estimate for my place means that I’m up more than 2.5X in 10+ years. Values are up about 25%. But it also depends on if you are condo, single ownership or coproperty, with coproperty still having the lowest values.
JP 12:52 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
I’m not sure where anyone is getting the money either, but then I remember what I do for a living…and some of the crappy education and career decisions I’ve made, so that I’ll probably never own anything, unless/until I inherit.
Friends who are professionals with good careers (i.e., they make above-average salaries) and have a substantial amount for a down payment have lost more than one bid…apparently to people willing to pay $600,000-$800,000 cash from the get-go. I suspect this could be due to the reasons outlined by others above, and quite frankly, money from people moving from elsewhere to Canada, which is a stable place to live and park money, if you have it.
Kevin 13:08 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
I suspect this is the last gasp of the hot real estate market.
Pre-approved mortgages with few properties on the market led to a spike in prices.
If the pandemic really does produce a change in work and lifestyles, I suspect a lot of people are going to permanently move out of the city. Who wants to live *and work* in a 3 1/2?
Mr.Chinaski 13:35 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
Other side of the medal, condos aren’t selling great in some neighborhoods, airbnb has flooded the market and inventory is going up :
https://www.lapresse.ca/affaires/2020-07-08/immobilier-residentiel-la-province-en-feu-des-quartiers-montrealais-engourdis.php
JP 15:17 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
“If the pandemic really does produce a change in work and lifestyles, I suspect a lot of people are going to permanently move out of the city. Who wants to live *and work* in a 3 1/2?”
So true.
Blork 16:49 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
Not just out of the city, but *away* from the city. Even before the pandemic I was reading about smaller cities and towns getting a bit of a rebirth from young people getting out of Dodge and moving to smaller towns where life is more affordable and (from some points of view) more pleasant. Remote working enables this hugely, but many of the people making the move are also artists who no longer feel the need to have physical proximity with their various agents, galleries, etc.
Most of the articles I saw were from the US, where they would talk about people moving from San Francisco or New York to places in Minnesota or Iowa or whatever. But I’ve also seen similar articles about people moving to small towns in Southern Ontario or Manitoba and whatnot.
Certainly for 2020 my life would be no different if I lived in Drummondville, Rimouski, or Métabetchouan–Lac-à-la-Croix instead of Longueuil. Or not much different. I’ve only been to three restaurants since mid-March (for take-out only), have done zero cultural activities outside of the house, and have only done one face-to-face visit with a friend. I could have done all that from anywhere. That said, I will be really really really happy when it’s no big deal to go to the Jean-Talon Market and so on; places which have no equivalent in those other towns.
More on-topic, I will attest that my five year suburban experiment (started in 2003 and still on-going) has never felt better. There are only two humans living in this house, but we both like a lot of space and both want our own home offices. We are both done with tripping over the other person and trying to work by plunking a laptop down on the dryer in the back and calling it a desk. No. She gets a room of her own and I get a room of my own and that’s how we stay civilized. Also, a back yard with garden boxes. A workshop in the basement (that we actually use). Space for all those book shelves AND a huge TV. A treadmill and exercise area. Etc. etc. No way we could afford that in the city, at least not in the parts of the city where we’d want to live.
For reference: I saw a place for sale in Villeray yesterday that looked really nice. It was the right size (four bedrooms – or two bedrooms and two offices) and had a spectacular kitchen in terms of the workspace and whatnot. It was thoroughly renovated, which means there’s no way it’s anywhere near what I could afford, but I kept looking anyway. The renovations were tasteful and allowed the place to keep its original charm (not a total do-over like some of those highly designery places we’ve been seeing). All in all what I’d call a dream house in Villeray. I figured it would be around $800,000, which is way above my budget. Then I checked -> $1.5 million. FFS! $1.5 million for what is basically a regular house but on the nice side, not even a posh Westmount duplex. So Longueuil it is.
Kate 19:24 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
Who wants to live *and work* in a 3 1/2?
I don’t mind it. My landlady calls my place a 4½ but it’s laid out so you couldn’t easily share it with someone else. I’d say I have a kitchen, a bathroom and a double room which is half bedroom, half office/workroom. There’s a sort of salle des pas perdus between the front and back of the flat, which I suppose the landlady counts as a room, but I don’t know what room it would be. Certainly nobody could use it as a bedroom.
Mind you, in summer I also have a tiny back porch and yard, which is nearly a whole extra room, conceptually. But I’ve lived and worked in here through winters and it’s been fine.
Ephraim 19:37 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
I don’t want to live in a small town…. sorry, just not for me. When the big activity in town is going to the mall… no, not for me. Where you can’t walk because there is no sidewalk, not for me. When the best restaurant in town isn’t in town, not for me. When you ask for a half sour pickle and they look at you as if you fell off a turnip truck, not for me. I’m a city boy. I want to walk to a corner store. I want to walk to a restaurant. I want to live among others.
EmilyG 19:40 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
I’m currently living and working in a 3 1/2, now made bearable by air conditioning.
Kate 20:22 on 2020-07-10 Permalink
Ephraim: likewise. I have only ever lived in a city. The country and small towns make me antsy and I know the main reason why: I can’t drive, so I’m always there at someone else’s sufferance, and can’t just leave when I please.
Kate 11:59 on 2020-07-11 Permalink
EmilyG, I know you’re a musician, and I don’t know how that works out in a 3½. The loudest my work gets is occasional passionate keyboarding.
EmilyG 18:00 on 2020-07-11 Permalink
I had to negotiate clarinet practice time with my landlord.
Though most of my paid music work is in the music arrangements I write on my computer. The landlord hates it when I type on my computer too late at night or early in the morning but isn’t bothered by the typing during the day.
Kate 18:16 on 2020-07-11 Permalink
Hates it when you type? Good lord. Are you writing on a Smith-Corona?
EmilyG 18:27 on 2020-07-11 Permalink
The landlord lives below me and sound goes through the floor easily. I type on a computer that’s on a table that’s on the floor.
He says it makes as much noise as a family of five.
JaneyB 19:30 on 2020-07-11 Permalink
@Emily G – there’s got to be a way around this eg: some kind of floor sponge or insulation. There are new materials being developed all the time. That’s a very crazy situation.
EmilyG 21:08 on 2020-07-11 Permalink
But he’s a light sleeper.*sigh* And I have to try to go to bed around 10 PM or else I’ll make too much noise walking around on the floors.
Though a solution is to just put my laptop on my lap while typing, if it’s too early or late in the day. But yeah, the situation sucks.
Ephraim 11:00 on 2020-07-12 Permalink
I can’t even manage the ‘burbs… mall culture. With a 20 minute walk, I can be at dozens of restaurants, 4 pharmacies, 2 large supermarkets, a multi-cinema, 2 SAQ stores, 2 bakeries, 5 parks, a concert hall, etc. And I can walk from here to the Eaton Centre…. but yet I have only been there once in ten years and that was for dinner at the Time Out place.
@EmilyG Your landlord should have taken the TOP apartment rather than the bottom.. But there are a number of ways to mitigate the noise, in particular a rubber mat and a carpet on top of it. And when they renovate, fire/sound proofing in the ceiling. Caulking all the cracks also helps.
Bryan 13:12 on 2020-07-12 Permalink
@EmilyG I feel your pain. I once had a neighbour call the police on me because of my piano practice. On a digital piano. Which I played using headphones.
If you’re ever interested in playing the Brahms or Beethoven clarinet trios, let me know! I have a cellist I work regularly with.