How does your Toronto neighbourhood rate, in a city where the housing market has gone up, up and up again in the past few years? Are you watching while your neighbours making a killing on the ramshackle fixer-upper they bought a few months ago, and thinking you should act now to cash in on the hot market that everybody's talking about?
In some neighbourhoods, bidding wars add $50,000 to $100,000 or more to the final selling price, leaving buyers to speculate on how much they should offer on homes they want to purchase. First time buyers often learn through trial and error that they have to bring a significant amount of money to the table if they want to get into the most desirable areas. Other regions aren't quite as hot, but their average prices have still made steady gains in recent years.
With the mortgage crisis creating huge problems in the United States, there is speculation that the housing boom is fizzling in Canada. Some agents are suggesting that the end is near for the dizzying bidding frenzy that has become common. Recent statistics have shown small increases in many areas of Toronto, and decreases in some. The GTA resale housing market saw 3,955 homes change hands in the first half of April, down 5 per cent from the same period last year, the Toronto Real Estate Board reported.
How does a home buyer make sense of it all? Toronto Real estate expert John Pasalis was online earlier for a discussion on the state of the housing market in Toronto.
John Pasalis (John Pasalis)
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John Pasalis is the founder of Realosophy.com, a Toronto-area real estate information and services company. A graduate of the University of Toronto, he holds a B.Sc. in Economics. Mr. Pasalis began his career in real estate 10 years ago, first working as a portfolio investment manger and then moving into sales. He is a sales associate with Prudential Properties Plus in Toronto and a frequent contributor to MoveSmartly.com, a prominent Toronto real estate and neighbourhoods blog.
Founded in 2006 by four friends around a kitchen table, Realosophy.com brings consumer-focused real estate education together with cutting-edge technology solutions to serve the needs of home buyers and sellers. The website is quickly growing popular with consumers and real estate industry professionals alike. Among its service offerings is the Toronto and GTA Neighbourhood Profiler, a comprehensive resource on average home prices, school performance and transit routes for over 180 neighbourhoods.
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Danielle Boudreau, globeandmail.com writes: Hi John. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions about Toronto's real estate market today. What do you think are the next up and coming neighbourhoods in Toronto, and do you find that it's better for buyers to take a chance on them, or stick to more established areas?
John Pasalis writes: Hi Danielle, I am glad to be here and am looking forward to our discussion.
Up and comers Leslieville, Mimico and Hillcrest have been popular with my clients - once they learned of them. To spot up and comers, we often need to unlearn the way we think about neighbourhoods. To look at, Woodbine Lumsden may not spark the imagination - but if you look closely, some telltale things are happening: newer or recently renovated homes are starting to appear. Next, we look for trend-setting bars or cafes to move in, followed by the big chains (the so-called Starbucks factor).
To mitigate the risk of the up and coming neighbourhoods means understanding your concerns. Are you worried that the place won't clean up quickly enough for your lifestyle? This one is tricky - many residents of Leslieville would probably like the "exotica" of Jilly's Adult Entertainment to disappear, but they may have to wait. If you are worried about price stability, it is important to understand what it is that makes nearby established neighbourhoods popular - and to understand whether the emerging area shares these features. Our work featured in today's Globe and Mail real estate centre section, shows that proximity to the subway network, particularly when it comes to condos, correlates to appreciation. This is what makes lesser knowns like Woodbine Lumsden a more likely winner.
