Housing market

[SteelTown]

My supervisor put her house up for sale, she made the asking price higher than typical and yet she got $10K more than she was asking and sold within a day. She lived in the old section of Ancaster (helps that it was the only house up for sale in the area). Now she's taking the money and moving closer to Lake Erie and working part time until retirement.

Seems like the only sure way to get extra retirement funds is to sell your house nowadays.

[thistleclub]

Originally Posted by Zmonkey

Is there any report that just deals with the Hamilton condo market?
I am leasing mine out ever since I went to a house and want to get a feel where people think that market is going

If you scroll down into RAHB’s monthly market reports you'll find municipality-specific breakdowns of sales activity for Hamilton and Burlington.

[thistleclub]

Torontonians behind a quarter of Hamilton housing sales: study
(Hamilton Spectator, Mark McNeil, Apr 26 2017)

Nearly one quarter of Hamilton area homes sold in the first three months of the year were purchased by buyers from the Greater Toronto Area, a new analysis of the local marketplace has found.

RE/MAX — which sells about 60 per cent of the houses in Hamilton-Burlington-Grimsby — crunched its numbers in its Spring Market Trends Report to find that 23 per cent of the realtors were from the Greater Toronto Area.

Conrad Zurini, broker of record for RE/MAX Escarpment Realty, says the company believes in almost all cases the realtor and the purchaser come from the same city. It's not possible to track the former address of buyers, but real estate transaction forms do contain the name of the selling realtor and the city he or she comes from.

Zurini says it's not a perfect science — and not something that has been widely done in the past — but it does give insight into a major trend in Hamilton that goes some distance to explain why it is so hard to find a home.

When a Toronto buyer purchases a Hamilton house, he says, it's a net loss to the local inventory, because that purchaser never puts a local home back into the market.

Moreover, Zurini said: "Increasingly, these are (Toronto) investors looking to purchase townhomes and small single-detached homes as rental properties (in Hamilton)."

He pointed to CMHC stats from last year that show a slight jump in the vacancy rate to 3.8 per cent from 3.4 per cent, compared to 2015.

He suggested a frenzy by Toronto buyers to purchase investment properties could be adding an inventory of new rental properties to the marketplace faster than demand.

Read it in full here.

[Berklon]

^ It really isn't surprising.

I went to plenty of open houses over the last year, and there was always someone from the GTA at the viewing.

[drpgq]

Hamilton available 1 bedrooms up to $1020 (up 7.4% year on year) and 2 bedrooms up to $1250 (up 13.6% year on year). Toronto 1 bedrooms were up to $1940 (15.5% year on year) so that differential is even bigger. Too bad they don't have any Burlington or Oakville numbers.


Canada’s Largest Cities See Big Spikes In Rental Rates
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/10...es_a_23250150/

[thistleclub]

Originally Posted by drpgq

Hamilton available 1 bedrooms up to $1020 (up 7.4% year on year) and 2 bedrooms up to $1250 (up 13.6% year on year). Toronto 1 bedrooms were up to $1940 (15.5% year on year) so that differential is even bigger. Too bad they don't have any Burlington or Oakville numbers.

Canada’s Largest Cities See Big Spikes In Rental Rates
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/10...es_a_23250150/

They actually do have Burlington numbers. Headline writers lazily treat City as equivalent to CMA, which it is obviously not. And even within markets there are anomalies.

Private Apartment Average Rents, Average % Increase, Oct 2017 vs Oct 2016

West End 1.1% (to $1,003)
Downtown Core 2.6% (to $937)
Central 6.6% (to $919)
Central East 3.1% (to $793)
East End 5.9% (to $1,009)
Mountain 9.5% (to $930)
Wards 1-8 4.9% (to $934)
Wards 9-10 + Grimsby 2.6% (to $874)
Wards 11-15 5.2% (to $1,055)
Burlington 6.9% (to $1,351)
Hamilton CMA 5.5% (to $1,020)

As of Oct 2017, average rents for 1BR units in Hamilton were almost all below $900. Burlington's average 1BR rent was $1,244, a 7.1% YOY increase. Across the Hamilton CMA, average 1BR rents increased 4.1% YOY to $905 ($843 in Wards 1-8, a 4.1% bump).

As of Oct 2017, average rents for 2BR units in Hamilton were almost all below $1,100. Burlington's average 2BR rent was $1,366, a 5.6% YOY increase. Across the Hamilton CMA, average 2BR rents increased 6.4% YOY to $1,103 ($1,026 in Wards 1-8, a 6.7% bump).

Fun fact: Downtown Hamilton contains almost a quarter of all apartment units in the entire Hamilton CMA, and over 30% of the CMA's 1BR units.

Source: CMHC Hamilton CMA Rental Market Report

Oakville’s data is covered in the CMHC GTA Rental Market Report:

Private Apartment Average Rents, Average % Increase, Oct 2017 vs Oct 2016

Batchelor 0.7% (to $984)
1BR 3.5% (to $1,257)
2BR 2.3% (to $1,456)
3BR+ 0.1% (to $1,737)
Total 1.1% (to $1,394)

[thistleclub]

Globe & Mail, January 7, 2006: Go west, young artist

Globe & Mail, December 17, 2017: Hamilton doesn’t need real estate bargain-hunting Torontonians

[drpgq]

Wow it is almost 12 years since the first Globe article. I can sort of understand the sentiment in the second article.

[thistleclub]

Hamilton hosts Nordic experts in affordable housing
(Hamilton Spectator, Andrew Dreschel, March 18 2018)

Maybe Hamiltonians should be learning to say "skol" this spring.

Thanks to five Scandinavian countries, the city is getting an estimated $170,000 worth of free expert advice on its social housing challenges.

In May, more than a dozen delegates from several Nordic countries will arrive to take part in a two-day workshop intended to bring new ideas to Hamilton's growing focus on affordable and sustainable housing.

The event is funded by a group of Nordic organizations and an arm of the governments of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland that promotes Nordic solutions to urban development issues.

Glen Norton, Hamilton's director of economic development, hopes the project fires up local housing stakeholders with ideas to help improve the existing affordable housing stock and break the backlog of some 6,300 people on the wait list.

"We have to figure out a way to get more done, to get ahead of the growing list, and I think this event will be one of the initiatives that we need to do," Norton said.

"I would love as an outcome that we sort of step up the pace that we get affordable housing built in the city."

Why did the Nordics choose Hamilton?

According to urban planner Pamela Tiller, who works for the Royal Danish Consulate in Toronto, Hamilton sprang to mind as a result of media coverage of last year's "Hamilton Consulate" in Toronto, part of a GTA marketing blitz by the city's ec-dev department, and a splashy article on the city in Toronto Life magazine.

Tiller, whose job is to promote Danish urbanism abroad, says Hamilton jumped out as an agile, innovative city hungry for change and open to outside solutions to urban problems.

Read it in full here

[HillStreetBlues]

From the Spectator: Real estate sales and prices tumble in March

Real estate sales in Hamilton-Burlington have plummeted for the third straight month — and this time prices took a sizeable tumble as well.

The Realtors Association of Hamilton-Burlington (RAHB) says residential sales fell by 37. 8 per cent in March 2018 compared to a year ago — 1,050 homes last month next to 1,689 sales in March 2017. Sale prices fell by 13.8 per cent.

That means the average sales price in Hamilton-Burlington was $530,843 last month compared to $615,776 in March last year.

The average sale price of freehold homes fell 15.5 per cent with condominiums falling by 1.6 per cent.

That's significant, though other parts of the GTA (especially the north- Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill) are down a lot more, up to 30% or more in some areas. One wonders how much further prices will fall, or if they will be lateral from here. April/May was the peak, so there will be worse news through the spring with the next monthly updates.

[thistleclub]

Originally Posted by HillStreetBlues

From the Spectator: Real estate sales and prices tumble in March

Also:

• Average days on market for residential listings increased 50%.
• Median days on market for residential listings doubled.
• Number of freehold sales fell 38.4% YOY on average

Number of sales, Mar 2018 vs Mar 2017, by RAHB submarket:

Dundas: -70.0%
Flamborough: -69.7%
Burlington: -48.1%
Stoney Creek: -43.5%
Hamilton Centre: -42.0%
Hamilton East: -41.6%
Hamilton West: -41.4%
Dunnville: -36.7%
Ancaster: -31.1%
Waterdown: -29.2%
Hamilton Mountain: -26.3%
Caledonia: -14.3%
Glanbrook: +0.7%
Grimsby: +0.7%

[HillStreetBlues]

Those are incredible sales drops.

So far, the media are not covering the market collapse/crash/decline/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Once they do, and Canadians remember that prices do not go up forever (it's been almost thirty years since a significant decline in Ontario), prices could fall even more.

[LRTfan]

Originally Posted by HillStreetBlues

Those are incredible sales drops.

So far, the media are not covering the market collapse/crash/decline/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Once they do, and Canadians remember that prices do not go up forever (it's been almost thirty years since a significant decline in Ontario), prices could fall even more.

I wouldn't term this a 'market crash'. The government crashed it themselves because they refuse to end their relationship with NIMBY's. The real solutions are found in adding millions of new housing units in Southern Ontario. Not artificially slowing the market.

[HamiltonBoyInToronto]

I wouldn't think of this as a crash either .... Everything in life including the economy and housing market face ups and downs ... The number of sales has gone down because people listen to economist and get scared or decide to put off buying or selling .... These things happen .... However, we have all seen what goes up eventually comes down and vise versa....there had to be some sort of slight correction and slow down because at the rate things were going everyone would be living on the streets in a couple years

[thistleclub]

Inventory overview of the last two years, extrapolated from RAHB Market Stats:

Hamilton Residential Listings, YOY Variation

Mar 2018: -11.7%
Feb 2018: -13.3%
Jan 2018: +0.7%
Dec 2017: +4.5%
Nov 2017: +12.2%
Oct 2017: +14.2
Sept 2017: +22%
Aug 2017: -6.2%
July 2017:+15.3%
June 2017: +25.1%
May 2017: +40.1%
Apr 2017: +9.7%
Mar 2017: +19.0%
Feb 2017: + 2.3%
Jan 2017: -3.5%
Dec 2016: -1.1%
Nov 2016: +14.3%
Oct 2016: +0.6%
Sept 2016: -5.7%
Aug 2016: -0.2%

July 2016: -6.4%
June 2016: -10.5%
May 2016: -9.3%
Apr 2016: -9.2%
Mar 2016: -11.1%

Hamilton Residential, End of Month Listing Inventory, YOY Variation

Mar 2018: +74.1%
Feb 2018: +64.8%
Jan 2018: +57.8%
Dec 2017: +61.0%
Nov 2017: +43.9%
Oct 2017: +50.7%
Sept 2017: +56.5%
Aug 2017: +48.1%
July 2017: +50.3%
June 2017: +35.9%
May 2017: +9.8%
Apr 2017: -29.0%
Mar 2017: -38.1%
Feb 2017: -42.0%
Jan 2017: -39.9%
Dec 2016: -32.4%
Nov 2016: -25.1%
Oct 2016: -31.4%
Sept 2016: -33.7%
Aug 2016: -39.3%
July 2016: -33.7%
June 2016: -33.4%
May 2016: -35.3%
Apr 2016: -28.7%
Mar 2016: -29.5%

[durandy]

Originally Posted by LRTfan

I wouldn't term this a 'market crash'. The government crashed it themselves because they refuse to end their relationship with NIMBY's. The real solutions are found in adding millions of new housing units in Southern Ontario. Not artificially slowing the market.

The govt cooled down a market that was completely out of control, and not because of lack of supply. These are people taking money out of their existing overvalued home to put it into an overvalued rental condos. I'm not sure if what we're seeing is going to be followed in any event in a couple months by the liquidation of a whole lot of B lenders, but I think it was pretty likely had this not taken place.

[Berklon]

As down as everything has looked for the last 6 months or so, I'm still not seeing much change in home prices. I think people have more time and options when buying a home now, but they're still paying the high prices they always were for the most part.

[drpgq]

This time last year was basically peak FOMO. It will be interesting to see where we are in six months.

[King&James]

Look to the Vancouver market as a beacon of what happens when government interferes. Short term hit, then back to resuming climb. Demand is still there and the wave of Toronto exodus will lap up against Hamilton shores soon again.

[LRTfan]

Originally Posted by King&James

Look to the Vancouver market as a Beacon of what happens when government interferes. Short term hit, then back to resuming climb. demand is still there and the wave of Toronto exodus will lap up against Hamilton soon again.

I feel like much of what we've seen has just put Hamilton back a few years to where certain neighbourhoods were a gong show, but other parts of the city were more calm...my downtown/west end hood is seeing some ridiculous prices in recent listings and sales going full price.

Hamilton is NOT Vancouver or TO. If council stopped pandering to whiners, and actively pursued 10,000 new housing units to be built in the city ASAP, we would see a balancing of price points and rental vacancies. But Hamilton is still anti-business and the ON government is just a joke that couldn't operate an ice cream truck if it had to.