RBC Economics with another new report out today (they've upped the frequency). Bullets from their summary:
▪️ expect activity to slow to a crawl in most markets across the country in April and as long as social distancing and lock-down measures are in place
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▪️ unclear how long home prices will hold up
▪️ expect property values to come under increasing downward pressure the longer restrictions persist and the deeper the recession gets
▪️ Super thin activity also makes the market prone to erratic price moves.〰️
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TRREB had predicted 97,000 transactions for 2020. Were tracking well the first 2.5 months. Now they're saying they're going to issue a revised forecast when they get some more info. /3
Crazy shifts this week as the fall market has officially kicked off. 🍂
Let's start with Freeholds. Note that weekly bump. Higher than any fall in the last 7 (but for one week of 3,040 in 2018) and it's only first week of fall season. 🧵/1
The week-over-week (w/w) change was ⬆️428 listings for Freeholds (houses). Below's the equivalent week in the last 7 years. Usually the weeks leading up to and including Labour Day ⬇️w/w and then things start to grow.
2018 +324
2019 +258
2020 +320
2021 +248
2022 +135
2023 +213
2024 +428
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Here's a different look. Number of Freehold listings 0-7 DOM:
9/3: 314 (was 298 week before)
9/10: 962
Tripled! Now, a bunch of those are going to be re-listings ("Hey let's terminated and put it back fresh after Labour Day"), but a bunch are brand new too. /3
Here's a rental eviction story a friend of mine is letting me share, from the N12 notice (family member) to the recently concluded LTB hearing. So grab a ☕️, sit back 🪑, and read this 🧵 to see the outcome. /1
July 2020 - "I texted him at 9:30am asking about cockroaches I had seen in the apartment in the last few weeks.. he replied a few hours later asking me if the type and let me know his mom would be moving in.. all in the same message with the 🙏at the end. Next day sent N12." /2
He'd lived there 9 YEARS.
"I had a feeling it was bullshit but really what could I do with no proof.. I was tempted to stay and wait for it to get tied up in the LTB, some part of me believed it was possible he was being truthful."
Since CBC Marketplace likes investigating, I thought I'd do my own investigation on the house in the Real Estate "exposé" that aired last night, which centered around this house in Vaughan. Here's a bit more info for you in this 🧵/1
The owner was complaining about how they listed on the MLS offering to pay 1% commission to the "co-operating brokerage" (buyer's agent), which is short of the more common 2.5% commission offered in the GTA market. She claimed that agents were "steering" their clients away. /2
The CBC investigation with the large sample size of 3 agents, found 2 of them appearing to discourage their buyers (don't know if they were actually clients because they didn't mention if they'd actually signed Buyer Representation Agreements, which is no small matter). /3
So CBC is running a show tonight (which I'm PRVing). Here's the article previewing it. I got emails this afternoon from TRREB and OREA about it this aft, so it might be getting some play.
Here's the Sept 2nd RECO bulletin referred to by TRREB above, and in the article where it said RECO "issued a notic ice about steering to the over 93,000 real estate agents, brokers and brokerages under its purview." /3
TRREB has released its September #torontorealestate numbers. They like to accentuate the stats that would indicate everything is awesome, but let me point out 5⃣ STATS SHOWING MARKET COOLING ❄️ /1
First let me say it's not a COLD market yet by any means. But problem is everyone just likes to look at YoY change. When you think about it, 12 months is a somewhat arbitrary period to compare to. So September sales are way ⬆️(42%) and average prices are also ⬆️ (14%) /2
1⃣ AVERAGE YoY PRICE GROWTH IS SLOWING.
In July it was +16.9%
In August it was +20.1%
In September that slowed right down to +14.0%
Note a good chunk of the price growth is due to mix (less condo apts, more detached). /3
Some weekly #torontorealestate sales numbers in this thread. Firstly, week over week pattern this year continued to follow same as last year (only couple of deviations on here, main one being Labour Day one week later this year). /1
The total sales in the 416 in the past 4 weeks cumulative have been just 1% below 2019, with this week being flat. /2
But "tale of two cities" continues, with freehold (lowrise houses) selling stronger than last year and condos (apts and townhouses combined) selling weaker of late (and didn't show the huge "pent-up demand" that houses did. /3