Surging Housing Prices

There is no hiding that there is a sudden boom in the Toronto housing market over the past decade. You have may heard from your relatives when they bought a home for the mid-$200,000’s and how that compares to the present day where that’s now a down payment. New home buyers’ question whether they can afford to own a home or will renting be their only option.

Over the past couple of years, the housing market has seen some drastic ups and downs as we were faced with a global pandemic back in 2020. During that time, housing prices followed the economy with people’s earnings cut and their assets losing value. After the shock of the pandemic, there was a rebound in the market that sored house prices way past the normal growth rate. According to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, Canada’s biggest city jumped 27%, which is the biggest increase over the past two decades despite the rebound faced in 2020 from covid lockdowns.

As we had the rebound in the market and are channel out of the global pandemic, we are starting to see prices fall and return to the prices we had back in 2021 stated by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA).

However, mortgage uptrends is a factor that followed house prices. Economist stated that the central bank is holding its key policy rate at 4.5% and are limiting banks from hiking interest rates.

As all these factors come to play a part into whether an individual could either own or rent their own place—we do have to look to Ontario’s Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act, which takes aim at building 1.5 million homes by 2031, while laying a strong foundation to make life easier and more affordable for people across the province, one that we will be sure to get our buckets dirty with.

Notes:

1.    Altstedter, Ari. Hertzberg, Erik. 2023. “Toronto Housing Market Roars Back with Sales and Prices Surging”. BNN Bloomberg. Retrieved on May 19th, 2023. (https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/toronto-housing-market-roars-back-with-sales-and-prices-surging-1.1915341#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20homes%20trading,the%20Covid% 20lockdowns%20of%202020)

2.    Jones, Ryan. 2022. “They purchased homes right before the real estate downturn. Now, they’re struggling to close”. CBC News. Retrieved on May 19th, 2023. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-homebuyers-struggle-close-1.6685427)

3.    Punchard, Hilary. 2023. “Record-high number of people in Canada don’t think they’ll ever afford a home: survey”. CTV News. Retrieved on May 19th, 2023. (https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/record-high-number-of-people-in-canada-don-t-think-they-ll-ever-afford-a-home-survey-1.6304113)

4.    Crawley, Mike. 2023. “Where Ontario’s housing market is headed in 2023”. CBC News. Retrieved on May 19th, 2023. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-gta-real-estate-2023-market-forecasts-1.6678177)