Toronto Condo and Real Estate Blog

The year’s strong spring housing market remained active in the first half of June with 4,074 homes changing hands, Toronto Real Estate Board President John Meehan announced today. An average of nearly 300 homes per day sold through the first 15 days of the month.”Market conditions have been very good all spring, and the strong activity we’ve seen is a reflection of that,” Mr. Meehan said. “With just a few days remaining, this spring has so far been over two per cent more active than last spring.”

Jason Mercer, Senior Market Analyst for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, noted that with strong economic fundamentals remaining in place, the Toronto Area housing market will remain quite healthy.

“Home sales will remain well above the long-term average this year,” Mr. Mercer said.

The average price for a home in the Toronto Area at mid-month was $358,648, up 4% from the end of June 2005. The median stood at $303,000, also up 4% from the $292,000 seen a year ago. Average time on the market for each sale remained very low at 32 days.

Toronto’s eastern waterfront continued to be very active during the first half of June. In The Beach, 30% more homes changed hands overall compared to mid-June 2005, with detached homes the most active type. Immediately to the east in Scarborough’s Cliffside / Birchmount Park area, a 55% increase in activity took place to mid-month, compared with mid-June figures from last year.

Further west, strong sales of condominiums and semi-detached homes in the Junction / High Park area of Toronto pushed overall sales 40% higher than the first half of last June.

“Good fundamentals and lots of consistency are the key factors in this market,” the Toronto Real Estate Board’s President said. “It’s a great time to make a switch to another home or get in the market for the first time.”

Toronto Realtors are passionate about their work. They adhere to a strict code of ethics and share a state-of-the-art Multiple Listing Service designed exclusively for Realtors. Serving more than 23,000 Members in the Greater Toronto Area, the Toronto Real Estate Board is Canada’s largest real estate board.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960

Condo developments are starting to make the most of rooftops and podiums
Open-air spaces offer everything from pools and hot tubs to restaurants and bars

Excerpt from an article by Tracy Hanes - The Toronto Star

For condo buyers, living in a highrise suite doesn’t have to mean sacrificing the backyard lifestyle.

Several projects under construction or new to the market - iLoft, 550 Wellington, VU, Luna, Casa, the Forest Hill, Murano and the Yacht Club in Whitby, to name a few - are among those incorporating outdoor amenities.

“The big concern of a lot of people is ‘I don’t have a backyard if I buy a condo,’” says Jeanhy Shim, editor of Urbanation, the quarterly publication tracking the Toronto condo market. “This addresses that concern and is considered an extension of the amenities. It’s something you didn’t see five years ago, but it’s what consumers like and want.”

Freed took his inspiration for newly launched 550 Wellington W., which will have 327 luxury condos attached to a hotel, from a couple of sources: his own penthouse now being built at 66 Portland, where he had a pool and cabana designed for the roof, and the “great rooftop pool and bar” he visited at New York’s Gansevort Hotel.One of the key features of 550 Wellington’s rooftop will be its infinity pool, an approximately 20-by-50-foot rectangle, where “water rolls off the edge of the pool and is seamless with the sky,” says Freed.

The rooftop will also include a 5,000-square-foot deck for lounging or sunning, a 3,000-square-foot restaurant and “lots of cabanas for dining,” where condo residents can have dinners catered by the rooftop restaurant’s chef.

At Camrost-Felcorp’s iLoft at Mystic Pointe in Etobicoke, the recreation centre sits on top of the condo’s podium above the third-floor parking garage (the tower soars up another 22 storeys), where the exercise room, yoga and aerobics studios look out onto a landscaped deck, barbecue area, outdoor pool and whirlpool, running track and sun decks.

Luna at CityPlace is catering to this demand. “When we started looking at the type of amenities we’d offer, we looked at hotel resorts around the world,” says Alan Vihant, vice-president of development for Concord Adex, which is launching Luna, the largest master-planned community in the GTA.

At another Daniels project under construction in Mississauga, One Park Tower, a club area on top of the 38-storey building includes a lounge, Internet cafe and billiards area surrounded by outdoor terraces.”It’s really a wonderful selling feature, as everybody, whether they have a 500-square-foot unit or a 1,500-square-foot one, can enjoy the space in the sky,” he says. “It’s democratizing the view.”

Here are some other projects offering outdoor amenities:

* Pinnacle Centre has a golf centre, tennis courts, running track and terrace on its podium, integrated with its indoor fitness and leisure amenities.

* VU, a master-planned community launched by Aspen Ridge Homes downtown, will make use of an eighth-floor podium to include two outdoor party rooms, barbecues and a lawn bowling or bocce court.

* Casa, on Charles St. by Cresford Developments, will use the entire fifth-floor podium as amenity space, with swimming pool, hot tub, landscaped terrace, double-sided fireplace, dining pavilion and alfresco bar. The fitness centre will overlook this space.

* The Forest Hill by the Goldman Group will have a 3,000-square-foot, Miami-style patio with outdoor furniture, landscaping and indoor-outdoor whirlpool adjoining the condo’s fitness and recreation centre.

* The two phases of Murano, at Bay and Wellesley Sts., will share a second-floor podium recreation area that features an indoor pool with retractable roof, overlooking an outdoor terrace. The third-floor podium will include a running track and landscaped lounging areas.

Read the full article

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information

By Cathie Dalziel
Professional Mortgage Advisor
Mortgage Alliance / Mortgage Maxx Inc.

There are two strategies for creating a tax-deductible mortgage:

(1) If you have an existing mortgage on your house, you can make all or part of it tax-deductible through an asset swap. Now most people who have mortgages also have various forms of investments, like mutual funds. The idea is to take these assets and swap them for mortgage debt.

Do it this way:

First, sell your investment assets. Cash them in, being mindful there will be a small tax bill to pay on any capital gains you realize.

Second, use this cash to pay off your residential residential mortgage (or a portion of it). If you are buying a new home you skip this second step.

Third, arrange a new mortgage.

Fourth, use the new mortgage money to buy back the investment assets you originally sold. Now you still own an equal amount of investment assets, and you still have a mortgage on your home. But because you borrowed against your home (in the form of a mortgage ) in order to buy assets that create wealth, the interest on your mortgage is now tax-deductible. You have just given yourself a giant tax break.

(2) If you live in a house with no mortgage, it’s even easier to build wealth and still get a fat tax reduction, using a home equity loan.

You can generally borrow up to 75% of the appraised value of your home with an equity loan. The good news is that because the loan is well-secured by the real estate, you can get it at a rock-bottom rate of interest, generally the prime rate. Even better news is that, so long as the money is used for investment purposes, to create wealth you’ll be taxed on later, the interest can be written off.

To make this simple and effective, most lenders will allow you to have an interest-only payment, which means you never actually pay back the principal amount borrowed. Why would you want to, when the entire cost to you is deductible from your personal taxable income?

So, instead of just having a house with no mortgage, you end up with an investment portfolio that could be worth tens, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus the ability to substantially reduce your taxable income.

If you borrow to invest in growth assets, like stocks or mutual funds, the interest is tax-deductible. You get a significant tax break at the same time your equity is put into things that will mushroom in value over the coming years. So, how do you cope with the cash flow demands of having a home equity loan in place? After all, you need to make interest-only monthly payments.

The answer is a SWP (pronounced swip), or systematic withdrawal plan. With the help of a mortgage advisor advisor, do the following: Arrange a home equity loan in the form of a line of credit, with interest-only monthly payments (you should avoid taking this money in the form of a mortgage, with blended payments of both interest and principal). Your payments are now entirely deductible from taxable income, so long as you put the money in the right place.

Use the funds to buy units in equity mutual funds. (Some people feel more comfortable with segregated funds, since they want a guarantee there will never be a loss - however higher fees will impair fund performance.)

Have your financial advisor set up a SWP, which means enough money can be taken from the fund on a systematic, monthly basis to cover off the interest-only payment on the home equity loan. Now the mutual fund is actually making the loan payments, rather than you. But every year when you fill out your tax return, the interest is deductible in your hands!

Held long enough (a minimum of five years), the mutual fund should give you substantial capital growth, despite the fact you have removed money through the SWP to cover all financing charges. It’s a win-win situation: the HELOC is good debt and the SWP is a great way to finance it.

You may well buy assets with a HELOC that temporarily fall in value. But because your loan is secured by the value of your home, and not the value of the funds you buy, there will never be a margin call to make up the shortfall (as is the case with borrowing money to buy stocks from a broker). Meanwhile, of course, you continue to write the interest on the loan off your taxable income, for a net benefit.

Finally, you will never take a loss on funds that have gone down in value unless you take the wrong advice, and sell. The proper strategy is to wait out any market correction and ignore the scare-mongers who confuse short-term events with long-term trends.

Contact Cathie today to discuss which option is best for you and start saving money on your most important investment - your new home.

Cathie Dalziel
416-693-1584 or 416-752-6299
http://mortgagealliance.ca/CathieDalziel
cdalziel@tmacc.com

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960