Toronto turning up the heat on landlords

The cold light of day did nothing to flatter the facade of 500 Dawes Rd., a fading 15-storey apartment building with a broken window here, a roost of pigeons there and bricks that are beginning to crumble.

It was a fitting place to make a point, as city inspectors, politicians and reporters spent a few hours yesterday surveying what frustrated tenants say they have endured for years.

The point was this: Life is getting worse in many of the city's aging, low-rent apartment buildings, where tenants of modest means face increasing financial pressure amid deteriorating living standards.

In an effort to stop the slide, city officials are turning up the heat on landlords who let their properties fall into disrepair, lest Toronto see a reduction in the supply of much-needed affordable housing. To that end, the licensing and standards division launched a targeted enforcement program this week, in which a special team of inspectors will audit buildings, issue work orders and take complaints directly from tenants who visit their mobile office.

CORNWALL: Discount real estate beckons

There was Perth, Smiths Falls, Rockland, Barrhaven. She must have looked through more than 200 postings on multiple listing services, she recalled.

She finally settled on a two-storey brick home in Cornwall, in a structure once used by Catholic nuns. It didn't matter that she had to commute two hours to and from her job in Ottawa, or that gas prices were at record highs at the time.

It was the perfect home. And it was selling at bargain-basement prices.

Ms. Larue-Harper paid $184,000 for a five-bedroom-plus-one house nearly twice the size of her previous abode in Carleton Place, which she'd sold for $215,000.

"Knowing that we'd get this gorgeous house for the price we did, it was sort of a no-brainer at that point," said Ms. Larue-Harper, who moved to Cornwall with her husband and five children two months ago.

Real estate markets in 2009 will be mired in the economic slowdown

Elton Ash, Re/Max regional executive vice-president for Western Canada, said the beginning of 2009 will look a lot like the end of 2008.

"The confidence issue, certainly from our perspective, [will be key] when we look at 2009," Ash said in an interview. "The first quarter of 2009 will certainly be a continuation of the trend we're seeing now, with reduced transactions and average prices coming down in Vancouver and throughout British Columbia."

Ash said consumers should have a better idea after the first quarter of 2009 what kinds of stimuli governments plan to inject into the economy, which should bolster confidence through the rest of 2009.

A Closer Look at Canada's Decline in Real Estate Prices

For the past couple of months I have been cautioning our readers against making any big conclusions about Toronto’s real estate market based solely on changes in average prices. Toronto has seen a big decline in the number of sales of high end homes this year which has been exaggerating the decline in prices. For more on this read my previous posts Toronto Land Transfer Tax Exaggerates Housing Price Decline and Making Sense of Toronto’s Real Estate Decline in October.

At a national level, economists from TD Economics noticed that national average prices were being skewed down because of steep declines in sales in British Columbia, where average home prices are the highest in Canada. Last month TD Economics published a report titled A Different Look at Canadian Home Prices where they introduced the TD Home Price Index as a more accurate way to measure changes in national prices.