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Lexicon posted:A frankly-bizarre cheerleading op-ed about condo construction in Toronto.  at the quality of research in this op-ed. Average rents are lower in Toronto than in major US cities (single source: rentjungle.com, no actual figure given)! Well yeah, except it doesn't look like he made any attempt to normalize on any factors like the long transit times and poor services in some of the unattractive corners of the city, or the tiny vacancy rates in desirable neighbourhoods. Also no mention of the fact that rents are only stable because we have rent controls, and how there's very little new rental housing being built. Also no mention of the shoddy, substandard quality of many new condos or how sometimes windows fall off and kill people. Oh well, surely someone will be around in 15-20 years to pay for the repairs when these shitboxes start crumbling. Oh, and speaking of which, a lot of the (better-quality, but less sexy or glass-clad) apartments built in the 50's and 60's are due for some pretty serious repairs and revitalization. Who's going to pay for that, exactly?
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Nov 17, 2013 21:11
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A window fell off the Shangri-La building in Toronto for the third time this year. Nobody was injured thus time but someone was hit by glass the last time. Someone remind me why nobody is getting charged with a crime over this?
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Nov 25, 2013 00:45
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Cultural Imperial posted:The most unrealistic aspects of that video are the youth and ethnicity. Like anyone young and white has that much money in Vancouver. I don't know, they look pretty important. I wonder if that Trump Tower will be as much of a massive failure as the one in Toronto.
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Nov 26, 2013 17:43
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Baronjutter posted:Do you even understand how many long term jobs cleaning up the mess it will create? Or the mercenary army needed to guard the pipelines from "eco-terrorists"! If a broken window creates jobs just imagine how many jobs a broken country will create. Too bad nobody in China is willing to pay for an un-wrecked environment. Unless...
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Dec 6, 2013 20:03
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The Star reports that CMHC's annual report says that 23% of condos were rented out by investors in 2012, but that's based only on MLS listings. Actual numbers could be anywhere from 20 to 30 to 50 to ???%.quote:“We think the number is closer to 50 per cent,” says veteran Toronto development consultant Barry Lyon. “The data they (CMHC) are using has some shortcomings. It’s only part of the story.” Nothing to see here, move along.
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Dec 19, 2013 15:24
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Cultural Imperial posted:http://i.imgur.com/5E1wtAv.jpg I love the giant bag of money representing $63k annual household income in 2011, a huge increase from the pitiful $50k in 2001. That's a whopping 26% increase over 10 years! That easily covers the mild increase in detached house prices from a little under $400k in 2001 to holy christ $1.2 million in 2011 goddamn.
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Dec 24, 2013 04:21
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RBC posted:I have a pretty good theory that the toronto housing bubble is funded entirely by drug money laundering. I also have no proof but history will be the judge. When your mayor is involved in crack trafficking its a pretty good bet the reach of trafficking syndicates has reached its peak. Well, if Montreal is any indication, the developer mafia in Toronto is just better at hiding their tracks. And you're not so far off: the One Bloor project was initially led by a Kazakh company, backed by a shady and possibly criminal bank - by Kazakh standards.
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Jan 12, 2014 05:33
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Cultural Imperial posted:I hope all y'all are maxing out your RRSP contributions. There's also $5500 of TFSA contributions per year that I doubt anyone but the most wealthy are maxing out. Also I'm kind of busy spending most of my meager income on rent and apparently the rest of the country is doing the same for rent or mortgage
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Jan 15, 2014 18:55
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Sassafras posted:I don't think rents that you or I paid as students 10+ years ago, prior to (probably) the biggest real estate boom in Canadian history, are terribly relevant to the present. I'm BC-based and my personal experience was that rents province-wide effectively doubled between 2004 and 2008. There hasn't been much movement since then, but I certainly know current students who have been paying $1000/mo, sometimes split between multiple people, to live in 1br units in houses chopped into 5-6 rental suites. Rents in Waterloo did not change much while I was there (03-08) nor have they changed much since after a quick glance at the rental boards: https://listings.och.uwaterloo.ca/Classifieds/Search/Results. I suspect the reason is because unless you have one of the shrinking number of RIM jobs (ha ha ha) in Waterloo or some other well-paying semi-permanent position, there is almost no reason to live there other than to study at UW/Laurier. $800/mo is nearly double the typical rate of a single-room sublet (example: co-op housing across the street from campus is $425-450 per room per month, http://www.wcri.coop/Housing/rates.aspx).
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Jan 20, 2014 16:51
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The marketing pitch specifically targeted renting 2 bedroom condos to UWaterloo students at $1600/month, not full-time professionals.
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Jan 20, 2014 18:38
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RBC posted:Yes it is. Actually, after quick googling, statscan says the unemployment rate dropped significantly in the K-W area in the last few months even with seasonal adjustment (I'm not sure there are that many seasonal jobs in K-W anyhow). So go hog wild! It dropped greatly in Brantford and Barrie too, for what it's worth.
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Jan 20, 2014 19:43
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Christ, does every Canadian politics thread have to descend into pointless derails? Anyone want to share their thoughts on French-speaking cab drivers?
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Jan 27, 2014 08:45
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Cultural Imperial posted:Housing thought of the day, courtesy of @yvrhousing: Hmm okay so taking that at face value, I have learned that there are no longer any homeless people, and there must be a housing bubble because supply has exceeded demand for a long time now and yet prices keep going up.
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Feb 16, 2014 02:02
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Cultural Imperial posted:http://www.scmp.com/comment/blogs/article/1435474/hk12m-garage-and-other-properties-prove-vancouver-realty-has-lost-plot I am amused by that too but comparing houses in Vancouver to places in Burlington, Halton Hills and loving Oshawa is pretty silly.
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Feb 27, 2014 02:52
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If the average price to rent a 1 bedroom condo is really $1875, which I highly doubt unless you're putting in some very specific qualifiers, then maybe you should rent an apartment, which are certainly not $1875 even downtown. I pay $1100 for a slightly smaller one bedroom. Surely they can find a 2 bedroom apartment closer than Liberty Village for less than $1800 (yes I know they can and that article is an embarrassingly poorly disguised paid advertisement). And wait, did they seriously call Liberty Village a prime location? Prime for what, exactly?
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Mar 8, 2014 19:06
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Lexicon posted:Isn't Tara Perkins typically more associated with the bearish side of the aisle? I guess she probably didn't write the headline - the article is far more nuanced than the headline suggests. I read the article and like you said, there's some nuance to it. The main points seem to be that: - Using a matched sample, or even only choosing homes that have sold at least twice, is not sufficient to remove changes in quality of the home, because even though the home never moves, it could be renovated between sales. Fine then, but I'm not sure what you can do about this bias. Presumably homes anywhere are being renovated, so this should only be a problem if homes with multiple sales are renovated more often than others, which sounds plausible. But I'm not sure how much this matters, because the rate or quality of renovations to homes that are off the market is irrelevant to anyone looking to buy. - Not all of the rental pricing indices take into account absurdly inflated condo rents. Okay, fine. Presumably that Dunning fellow had a crack at correcting this bias. However, it seems fair to only use existing rental units in a matched sample. I would guess that most new condo units coming onto the rental market are in downtown Toronto, or at the very least distributed differently from existing rental buildings. Otherwise, why the hell are people paying a $500/month premium for condo rentals over apartments? The other question is - are they really? The vacancy rate in Toronto is tiny, especially downtown, but is that true of condo rentals as well? Anecdotally, I know a few people who rented out condos temporarily, but they were not being gouged to the extent that the article suggests. Why would you pay an extra 30-40% to rent a condo instead of an apartment unless you're really desperate and can't wait for a vacancy to pop up in a decent apartment building? - I'm not sure what the right way to deal with this is, but it seems like a matched sample of houses and apartments is a better method than including new condos, considering that there are basically no new (semi)-detached homes being built in Toronto and only a few apartments, whereas condos are coming up like weeds. But then I guess the housing price index includes the price to buy condo units as well, so maybe I'm wrong. Besides those points, the conclusion is still that housing overpriced, just not as much as one thought. Okay then. Can't we still compare to other countries' price-to-rent or -to-income ratios, assuming they're using similar methodology with perhaps the same flaws? I guess the issue is that Vancouver and Toronto are building insane quantities of condos compared to almost anywhere else in the world, and there's no neat and easy way to deal with that.
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Mar 13, 2014 21:51
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HookShot posted:I can't get my head around how anyone could describe the GVA as going "west to Whistler". GVA goes all the way west to China and then follows the currents through to Kamchatka, Alaska and finally back to Whistler.
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Mar 29, 2014 05:03
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quote:A Toronto home buyer that bought a home in 1980 for $100,000, with $5000 down, in 2014 now has a home worth $500,000. His $5000 down payment has now risen to a $500,000 windfall. For those of you bad at math, that is 100 times more that the down payment, or a 10,000% return on invested money. I'm not good with math, should I buy a house because it sounds like you only have to pay a 5% down payment and the rest is free??
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Apr 2, 2014 05:05
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Well there's a great example of how a family can have substantial income and still gently caress up their finances badly. The husband makes $1875/month gross part time. That's what, at least $1650 net for him considering super low Alberta taxes, right? So his wife is making 4650/month net income, maybe 6000 gross? I hope her $72K/year job at a non-profit feels secure, and that they don't suddenly have to start paying more than just $100/month in child care for a 7 year-old. By the way, I thought there was no housing bubble? Where exactly did their BC rental condo tank so badly, Whistler?
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Apr 5, 2014 22:21
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Lead out in cuffs posted:So let's do the real world maths, assuming a flipping scenario: The people on that show are (supposedly) not usually flippers but just normal people who've had trouble selling their home because of outdated interior design/decor/whatever, which apparently matters to some buyers who are willing to spend a million dollars on a home but not a tenth of that to rearrange the interior to their liking.
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May 26, 2014 22:02
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Rime posted:If someone claims that Arthur Erickson or lovely glass sheathing is in any way visually stunning, let alone deserving of being called "architecture", I usually ignore their opinions on everything else. Just in case anyone gets the impression that architects are solely to blame for condos for all looking the same and having substandard construction to boot... they're not. It's the developer that decides they want an all-glass exterior, and that they want it done as cheaply as possible to meet the bare minimum of safety regulations even if the entire exterior is going to require expensive repairs in 10 years or less. Architects are mainly responsible for trying to design a building that both meets the developers often unreasonable demands and safety/planning/urban design requirements. If the developer wants a cheap leaky piece of crap, they're going to get it one way or another. Similarly, it wasn't architects who decided that stucco exteriors are appropriate for Canadian climates.
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May 27, 2014 23:42
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We're not saying that past performance guarantees future results, but if it did
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Jun 6, 2014 06:20
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Lexicon posted:excellent insight thanks More useful than yours, for sure. Cultural Imperial posted:The government can't and shouldn't manipulate interest rates. That's the boc's job. It can however, manipulate mortgage lending rates and standards. The BoC is a crown corporation controlled by the government. I don't know why this is even being debated.
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Jun 11, 2014 17:55
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Lexicon posted:Because the thread contains dolts such as your good self who've never heard of central bank independence. It's still part of the government, shithead. Which, you know, is the exact opposite of what Joe Oliver said. And if you're going to push the ridiculous notion that the Bank of Canada is completely independent of the ruling party's control, how about you take 5 seconds to look up who is responsible for appointing the governor in the first place?
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Jun 11, 2014 20:02
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Man, this thread sure has taken a turn for the terrible in the last few pages.Kalenn Istarion posted:Most government ports are bureaucratic messes that are only profitable by virtue of favourable siting via eminent domain, the TTC is a literal joke. The London (UK) tube is a wonder but I have no idea if it makes money. The HK subway otoh is a marvel of efficiency and is run for profit as well as being significantly cheaper for users than the TTC or skytrain. Japan's train system is also private afaik and is a marvel to travel on. Why can't the TTC be more like like Hong Kong transit? asks a moron who didn't bother to look up that Hong Kong's population density is 1.5x higher if you include the entire area of the territory (most of which is uninhabited mountains) while its urban population density is 10x higher.
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Jun 16, 2014 15:22
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jet sanchEz posted:From my parents I have learned that real estate, like many things, is cyclical. Yes it is cyclical, but the current cycle is for prices to go up forever, so you'd better get on board before the ship leaves port. Speaking of which, have any of you considered just living on a boat?
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Jun 16, 2014 17:08
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Baronjutter posted:So unless you have a burning passion for boats and sailing you're going to be miserable living in a cramped damp constantly decaying little box that you have to throw piles of money at to keep above water and mobile. This sounds just like a leaky condo, except that you can sail it to the hottest spots in the country like Kitimat and Prince Rupert.
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Jun 16, 2014 17:45
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RBC posted:lol the transcanada railway was "not developed by government"? Shipping industry? Banking? oil sands? mining? agricultural? Are you loving seriously claiming these industries developed privately? Do you have any loving clue how resource development and infrastructure gets built? Well, depending on how flexibile your definition of developed is... ... but listing steelmaking as a world-class industry in Canada is a head-scratcher. Have we all forgotten about Stelco? Like, it's right there in Hamilton. Or not. Not to mention that ignoring the Canada Wheat Board and the now-defunct Cereal Research Centre (thanks CPC!) is a biiit of a stretch.
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Jun 17, 2014 02:41
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So is Canada back to not being a terrible shithole, assuming that otter space's summary of the article is accurate?
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Jun 20, 2014 05:24
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Cultural Imperial posted:haha I had know idea Toronto was that hosed in the early 90s. Uh there was kind of a terrible recession around then. But that would never be possible today, oh no!
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Jun 26, 2014 04:10
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Maybe a lesser architect's design would have killed thousands instead of hundreds, did you think of that?
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Jul 5, 2014 20:09
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Kafka Esq. posted:Cities encourage capitalist expansion, as shown by this very thread. Rural towns tend to limit it. Devising a sustainable future involves a lot of changes, but that's a good start. Do you mean that small town living would inhibit industrialization and/or population growth, even if it's less efficient per capita than big cities? Because even that is pretty questionable, especially since higher standards of living generally lead to lower population growth (though also longer lifetimes and lower mortality, I guess).
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Jul 14, 2014 20:38
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Saltin posted:They did one of those in Toronto Life not too long ago too. It was a loving debacle. I love the contrasts, starting with this complete douche: quote:Craig Haynes “People think I make a lot of money because I do, and because I spent $4,000 a month on housing and loving wine combined as a single man and still have enough money left over to buy thousand-dollar suits regularly, dick around in Vegas and max out my RRSP contributions... but the taxes!” FrozenVent posted:Now I'm angry. Although I do appreciate the writer's skill in presenting these people as anything but loathsome. You missed this gem from the first couple: quote:RRSPs and investments: $0. (“Ha! We live month to month. When we have money left over, we go out.”) Savings accounts for the kids: $1,500. (“We put money in on birthdays and special occasions.”) at making $200k per year and living month-to-month with no retirement savings. gently caress you idiots.Now compare to the last couple, who seem reasonable and likeable: quote:The Jibodus Okay, that's a pretty hefty grocery bill. But their monthly expenses only seem to add up to under $6K per month, or $72k per year, and they should be making at least $110k after tax so I have no idea how this example is supposed to illustrate anything besides that it's extremely easy to “get by” on a meager $200K per year in Tronna.
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Jul 19, 2014 14:51
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PC Financial is telling me all about limited-time offer of a 2.97% fixed-rate 4-year mortgage. That's not all - I could also get up to 1,000,000 PC points if I apply now!! Ok, I guess free groceries for a few years is a more useful bonus than a new car***, but still. I was going to say something about how ridiculous it is for them to push a mortgage on to me knowing my income and transfers for most of the last few years, but then I realized that income isn't really an obstacle anyways.
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Jul 31, 2014 03:55
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Mr. Wynand posted:That trend line does not at all seem out of whack with population growth: Why should housing prices track population growth? That doesn't make any sense. It should track surplus or shortages in the housing supply, not the number of people in the country. Also is this housing price index inflation indexed or what? Mr. Wynand posted:Or disposable personal income: Again - is this real or nominal income? It looks like a total, not a median or average. And why should the price of housing track incomes either? If there's no discernible increase in the quality of the housing then doesn't that say exactly that we're spending ever larger proportions of our income on housing because reasons?
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Aug 6, 2014 02:00
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Maybe the population figures are inflation-adjusted and nothing else is.
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Aug 6, 2014 02:34
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I guess Pablo Guana looked up what Vancouver's actual climate is like after his initial reaction.
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Aug 11, 2014 03:16
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I can't speak to mortgages, but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone's credit card application requiring any serious proof of income (not saying they don't - I just haven't heard of it). You can get approved for thousands of dollars of credit over the phone just saying you make 50k per annum, sure why not? The only exception was getting my first credit card where Scotiabank refused to give me more than $500 credit and would only give me that much if I gave them a $500 cheque as collateral. 
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Aug 11, 2014 22:03
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Lead out in cuffs posted:They do a credit background check, though. That's why you needed collateral on your first card, since you had no credit record. Right, but your credit report doesn't necessarily have an accurate total household income. I'm pretty sure CIBC gave me a student card with no collateral, although it has been a while so I might be misremembering. Other banks seem to offer first credit cards with no collateral if you have another account with them (which I did with Scotia).
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Aug 11, 2014 22:34
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It was my impression that Toronto city council has been trying to get more buildings with three-bedroom units built, but I wasn't able to find any definitive proof that anything is happening on a larger scale than negotiating with developers on individual projects. I did, however, find a remarkably interesting article from Toronto Life of all places on young rich families raising kids in condos and the trials and tribulations thereof, complete with oversaturated portraits. Regarding the huge numbers of 1950s and 60s era apartments with crumbling infrastructure and insufficient and/or poorly planned public spaces, that was the last major plan pushed by our previous mayor, David Miller. Search for the Tower Renewal Project and you'll find a number of articles about it, including the city's own glossy brochure. The major flaw with the plan was that Miller didn't actually do much of anything about it before leaving office and we elected a moronic shithead in his place: quote:But comments days after the election from Nick Kouvalis, now Ford’s chief of staff, call into question Ford’s commitment to those initiatives. “I was getting briefed yesterday,” Kouvalis said. “I was like … the Tower Renewal Program — what is that? We’re subsidizing (installation of low-flow) toilets ... Guys, you know that stuff’s gotta stop. The priority is the taxpayer, to stop the gravy train, and that’s what we’re going to do.”  gently caress low-flow toilets amirite?? Finally, yesterday I saw the most amazing ad from noted jewellery expert "Harold the Jewellery buyer". He's been advertising second and third mortgages for some time, but the latest ad offers to buy property outright for people who need to sell right away. Yes, I poo poo you not, the main competitor of Russell Oliver wants you to sell your loving house to him just as you would a $300 gold watch - a quick appraisal and boom, it's done!
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Aug 16, 2014 18:11
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