Toronto Condo Prices Have Likely Fallen Sharply: Developer

Condo prices in Toronto may have fallen steeply from their peak when you take into account incentives being offered to buyers, a Toronto developer has reportedly said.

The Globe and Mail reported Monday that a developer “who declined to be named” estimates the actual prices of condos have fallen by about 15 per cent.

The 'Manhattanization' of Toronto will change family-housing dreams

The housing dreams of families wanting to live in central Toronto will undergo a sea change in the coming decade as the supply of detached homes dwindles and the remaining ones soar in price, real estate experts say.

The pressure is already mounting with single-family homes being snatched up in fierce bidding wars for tens of thousands of dollars — and in a few cases for $200,000 or more — over asking, often with no conditions attached to the offers to purchase.

Canada Income Inequality: How A Growing Earnings Gap Is Raising Home Prices For All Of Us

CALGARY and TORONTO — When it comes to the eye-popping housing boom that has seen house prices in Canada more than double in just 10 years, there are a few common explanations. Despite sluggish wages, bulls and bears alike generally cite some combination of easy credit, tight supply and, until recently, a relatively strong economy for opening the floodgates to an unprecedented housing binge, ratcheting up house values — and mortgage debt.

But there is evidence to suggest that income inequality — a trend that has been widening the gulf between Canada’s very rich and everyone else for the last three decades — may also be part of the equation.

For many of us, incomes have become so detached from house prices that any relationship between the two may seem unfathomable. This is particularly true in Vancouver, where the city's optimism about a once-sleepy outpost finally realizing its cosmopolitan dreams came face to face with the recession, prompting a festering suspicion that something had to give.

By mid-2009, with debris from the United States housing bust lodged firmly in the gears of the world economy and debt levels surpassing record highs, observers were beginning to question the stability of the most expensive housing market in the country, which dipped only briefly before resuming its steady climb.

It was amidst this anxiety-ridden atmosphere that a little-known Vancouver real estate blogger tapped out a controversial post titled "Invisible Hand of Income (Inequality)." Noting that average income figures "don't really tell you what is happening at the upper end of the distribution," the self-described Van Housing Bull argued that wealthy buyers could support the market — regardless of what the bears may have been prophesying.