Interactive Map of Toronto Housing Changes 2011-2016 | Hacker News Reader

Interactive Map of Toronto Housing Changes 2011-2016

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50 pointscityandtech49 comments

There's lots of talk about tapping into the 'green belt' to allow more residential building.

Something needs to be done though, soon and carefully. The market's getting out of control. And often what you don't hear is the 'spillovers'.

1.Where a person from toronto sells their home for a lot, then travels to a town outside toronto to retire/settle down. Local residents/new home owners can't compete with these buyers with so much capital(especially in areas with supressed/depressed employement).

2.Where people give up trying to afford living in Toronto and move out of town to commute. This has caused rents in Hamilton/Burlington etc to skyrocket.

I live an hour from Toronto. Single detached homes closing prices went up 40% since last April. It's an unsustainable bubble.

Nope just catching up to the valuations in Vancouver, New York, London, Tokyo and other desirable international cities.

New York and London definitely attract global talent. Toronto is not like them.

This is a speculation bubble.

Toronto is pretty cheap for a city of its size.

And pretty awesome. You will appreciate it 100% more if you visit our capitol.

Comparing Toronto with Ottawa is simply not a fair comparison. It is like comparing New York City with Albany or Seattle with Olympia.

The City of Ottawa includes the core of Ottawa plus all of its suburbs (excluding the Quebec side) and does not even top a million people. Everything is spread out and suburban such that our capitol is more like a bunch of closely spaced towns than anything resembling an actual city.

The City of Toronto (which excludes most of the suburbs) is, on its own, triple the population of Ottawa. The Greater Toronto Area is over 5x the population of the National Capital Region.

I think your points are definitely valid if I was being objective. But.. that was just a subjective statement :)

I spent most of my life in Toronto. I'm alright, thanks tho :)

I'd guess less "catching up" than "shunted away from"—Vancouver specifically.

(Vancouver passed a foreign home-buyer tax; suddenly the housing market there began to cool down. But, very likely, all that money didn't just stop trying to find a place to "land"; it just skipped over Vancouver for the next-easiest city to invest into.)

If Toronto enacts similar measures, the money will just move somewhere else again.

The housing market in Vancouver is heating up again. The tax does little to stop non-foreign buyers.

Again, an oversimplification.

Condos, especially 3 bedroom and 4 bedroom condos are on fire right now, because families need a place to live and those are the only homes they can afford. Detached houses east of Cambie are dead right now; all the foreign investors are in Toronto.

Please don't say that... I am hoping to rake in the giant ROIs...

And here I was hoping that I'd be able to afford a place in Waterloo eventually (I've already given up hope for a home in the GTA).

It's the same issue in NZ and Australia. All three countries are addicted to high immigration levels and rapid population growth, in order to grow the GDP. This will inevitably have effects on housing affordability and sprawl. If you try and hem in development like you say, the house prices will just increase even faster.

I don't think you can have your cake and eat it too. You either need to deal with an aging population that isn't growing fast, or you need to deal with a housing crisis.

The biggest problem both cities have is that everyone seems to only want a detached house. Condos are cheap in Toronto and they pump them out constantly but everyone still wants a fully detached house.

To me the frustrating part is that condos aren't cheap. The housing crisis wouldn't look so awful if you could get a 3-bedroom in a decently located mid rise for a half-million dollars... But instead they're all tiny one bedrooms. Which is just insane.

Plenty of larger units towards the edge of the city. The core is for DINKs.

Condos are cheap in Toronto

Not for long. In Vancouver condos were pretty cheap, at least until the average detached house topped $1 million. That puts them out of reach of middle class families and then everyone is competing for those condos. 3 bedroom condos are approaching $1 million now.

What do you consider cheap? 500k for 400 sq/ft? Toronto has some of the highest sq/ft prices in the world. There is nothing cheap. If you have ever been to Toronto you will notice that most of the homes are semi's and only outside of the city in what can be considered the suburbs (Etobicoke, etc) will you find detached homes. Lots are no more than 20-25 ft wide in the city.

You can get a 1+1 for $500k downtown. You can get a 2 bedded for 300k is Saugua.

Where did you get that it has some of the highest ppsf? A quick search shows just about every other major city I could check being higher.

I suppose it was when the CAD did not lose 40% of it's value against the USD. It knocked Toronto out of the top 10.

Where are you seeing those figures? I'd be amazed if it was even in the top 20.

I wonder if a city could just decide to turn all the land titles that detached homes sit on, from freehold titles, to life-estate titles.

So, it'd be like eminent domain, but you can keep living in the property (if you do live in the property) until you die. But, if you were to try to sell the land, you'd only be allowed to sell it to the government, at the market rate (as they would pay in under eminent domain); where the city would then tear down the detached home and (presumably) re-zone the land for highrises or mixed-use buildings.

Canberra, Australia sort of does this - houses were originally built by the government and have a 99 year lease hold, the first of these leases is expiring now.

Condos in Vancouver have been appreciating at over 30% YOY for a while now.

From what I could find quickly Toronto has over 2.5x as many new condo development projects under way.

Or maybe people should adjust their perception of what "residential housing" looks and feels like. The concept of large detached single-family lots is unsustainable. Much better would be 2-3 floor row houses or 3-4 floor midrises with plenty of green space in walkable distance.

Unsustainable, or unsustainable in the face of people using property as an investment rather than a place to live? Foreign investment has destroyed Vancouvers affordability. The city is half full of rich Chinese driving Audis, and nearly all real estate signs come in Chinese.

The same is happening down the west coast of the US as well as Toronto now. We need to prioritize affordability - and not just subsidies for the poor. The middle is being hollowed out, and only those with family history in the area are affording anything. Basically if you aren't on the ladder when it shot up to the sky you are screwed now.

Foreign investment might be the problem in Vancouver but the situation is not the same across the west coast. The SF Bay area market isn't dominated by foreign investment, people make more money. In the end population increases but the number of detached homes does not therefore a smaller percentage of the population we'll be able to afford them and they will be now expensive. You simply can't expect everyone to have a house in a city. Move to rural Kansas or Oregon

You don't see the connection between "make more money" and asset inflation in prices of homes? You act like you're (Bay area) living like kings.

I pay moderate amount for a nice place in a less happening tech but far more pleasant city, and I don't have to live like an animal.

"The city is half full of rich Chinese driving Audis, and nearly all real estate signs come in Chinese."

No, this is not true. You must not live in Vancouver. It is really sad that this myth continues to have a life of its own. I mostly blame the press and politicians for perpetuating it. I also blame everyone for lazy thinking.

Latest reports peg foreign ownership at 5%. People seem to overlook that the majority of buyers are Canadians who want to live in Vancouver, the favourable mortgage rates, and the geography of Vancouver which makes it hard to build more SD houses.

No, this is not true. You must not live in Vancouver. It is really sad that this myth continues to have a life of its own

I am from Vancouver and I don't know what you're talking about - every for-sale sign I see here in Burnaby for a detached house is primarily or exclusively in Chinese. Do you live in Vancouver?

Latest reports peg foreign ownership at 5%.

These are reports that are published almost exclusively by the BCREA, an organization that is known to misrepresent data (the so-called 'Benchmark Home' price, cross-market mixing, etc) and is the only organization other than the government that has this data.

Do you know why the provincial government imposed the foreign buyers tax? It was because after about 6 months of collecting this data, they realized that they had been so thoroughly and completely lied to by the BCREA, especially for sales figures in Burnaby and Coquitlam, that they felt compelled to act.

The 5% sales figure comes from aggregating all sales of all 'homes', condo+detached houses+apartments+pre-sales across the entire Fraser Valley, including places like Chilliwack. It also groups together the absurd stock of 1 bedroom condos that families can't live in with detached houses which 10 years ago families depended on. Please stop quoting this ridiculous 5% figure - you're doing so much more damage than you realize. I can't be everywhere to correct you.

Nobody cares about house prices in Chilliwack because they're still quite reasonable and they're too far away from where all of the jobs are. 75% of the GVRD is inflexibly zoned for detached houses and all of this property has now been bid out of the hands of Canadians who earn their living in this city. What good is 95% of housing not being purchased by foreign investors when it's all in Chilliwack or Squamish or is one of the ubiquitous lofts or 1 bedroom apartments that are completely unsuitable for families?

Ideally we would de-zone Vancouver and allow the city to organically densify - a city that can build as many homes as it needs can frustrate investors and still provide everyone with an affordable home. But in the meantime, the foreign buyer tax halted rocketing detached house prices and put a lid on what anyone can charge for similar market housing like 3 and 4 bedroom condos. Let's not pretend that this was going to get any better without that tax.

This is just my perception from driving around downtown, and east and south several weeks ago. Lots and lots of cars almost exclusively driven by older Chinese, and nearly all the real estate signs I saw were Chinese. I don't dispute your data but that impression I got stayed with me, and was confirmed by the several friends I knew who had lived in or around the city their whole lives.

I wonder where the discrepancy is.

Well, in Toronto - anecdotally - a lot of condos are being snapped up by Chinese. I have no problem if these individuals work and live in Toronto itself, but I have a serious problem if they're holding on to it as investments. In that case I've no issues with slapping punitive taxes on the property.

Your comment is racist - and certainly unCanadian.

What on earth does someone's race have to do with the housing market? Why does a person of Chinese decent have any less of a right to a) live in Vancouver, b) buy a house, c) have some economic success, d) drive an Audi?

I'm sorry you're upset about the state of housing in Canada, I really am. Fortunately for you - most desirable cities in the Canada ( and the World ) have Chinese residents so you wouldn't be happy living there anyways - all those signs in Chinese, and the Audis! Oh the humanity!

As a Canadian, I have to agree. Imagine someone in the States said something about blacks in Atlanta driving Bentleys.. There would be a riot. In Canada, however, it is cool to bash a whole race. This is not the first instance of this that I have seen and it does show true colours.

I've been visited by the shame police it seems, and you've extrapolated such an amazing amount over saying "wow there's a lot of rich Chinese here" that I wonder if you are doing some sort of parody I'm missing.

My parents live right downtown Burlington and little bungalows are selling for 1.4 now right beside them. It's absolutely insane

>There's lots of talk about tapping into the 'green belt' to allow more residential building.

How do you propose these people commute? There are no roads and Ontario can't seem to find the money to build any.

Your commute from the Greenbelt to downtown TO could take 2 hours or more. Just look at the folks coming from Barrie and the nightmare they have to drive in. Most of the work is in Toronto so many have no choice.

Maybe if the Gov would stop the 200 billion in foreign fx that gets laundered in Canadian Real Estate people could afford a house in Toronto.

I don't agree with touching the green belt but it starts a lot closer to the city then you are making it seem. Stouffville is partially covered by it and you can get to the city in an hour from there using public transit.

You can't magic up space for houses in the city. There is always going to be more people wanting a fully detached house than there is space for. So you either grow out and have people doing multi-hour commutes/try to build new citiy centres like Sydney is trying or accept the reality that not everyone can have a detached house and grow up.

It's true. I live in London Ontario, 2 hours down the 401, and it's shocking how the home prices have jumped. We are a medium sized city that often feels more kinship with Michigan and Windsor as far as our economy goes.

I had different plans than becoming part of a retirement community for TO real estate lotto winners. I'm trying to start a family and it feels like a race now.

GTA has more than enough housing supply:

https://betterdwelling.com/city/toronto/toronto-has-over-990...

The above, and the fact that the YOY is, 30% now? It makes people 'trade' it for profit and not live in it. Hence the last month legal measures to tackle speculation.

Every time people talk about 'tapping the green belt', they are either misinformed or paid to write that.

Interesting quote from the article:

"I know what you’re thinking, foreign buyers! Well, foreign buyers aren’t usually census respondents so these are most likely domestic residents. AirBnB, pied-à-terre, or short-term renting are all uses I’ve heard from owners of multiple Toronto homes. The most popular reason however, is likely plain ole’ speculation."

I wonder if these speculators are paying cap gains or have found some way to stretch the principal residence exemption to cover their rental property.

Living an hour east of Toronto new houses are going for $800k. No, these are nothing more than 1400 sqft homes packed together with no room to breathe. A few years ago those would have been $300-400k (and overpriced at that).

I ditched Toronto in 1979. Despite having a thriving job market, I see no compelling reason to return.

Want affordable? Move and setup shop in Elliot Lake. Hey, we can do this job from anywhere right. A $600K home in T.O is about $75K in Elliot Lake. Surrounded by woods, hiking, atv, cross country ski, downhill skiing, boating and all those great things that are 'life' outside of work.

Checked out this area where I saw some condos driving on Kippling Street. Unfortunately, because they are sort of a "ravine lot", it shows that there are +200 houses in the park it is atop.

http://prntscr.com/f3w9pu

So that green area in the above image is a park. I think the map tiles are likely segmented incorrectly.

The legend on this map is wacky:

1-5 0-1 0-(-4)

So what if the change == 1? Does it fall in the upper or the middle bracket? Same with == 0.

Also, the % is misleading. The changes are not in percents, they are in actual units. You can verify this by examining some data points on the map.

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