Lauri Lyons – Huffington Post
If your idea of Canada is dominated by maple syrup, hockey, flannel shirts or the G-20 Summit, it’s time to discover Toronto as the new capital of Cool.
Toronto boasts a population of five million people, 200 ethnic groups and 130 languages. Each year the city absorbs approximately 50,000 immigrants, making it Canada’s largest city and surprisingly one of the most culturally diverse communities in North America.
Although the Toronto skyline is dotted with a dizzying array of towering glass residential developments, it is the renewal of the once dodgy but now trendy West Queen, Ossington and King West neighborhoods that have visitors buzzing about the galleries, custom clothing boutiques, restaurants and specialty stores. As a reference consider these districts to be Toronto’s Brooklyn.
The best way to get an insider’s view of these neighborhoods is to take a tour with Betty Ann Jordan of InSite walking tours. Betty Ann, a former art journalist, has an all access pass to the young entrepreneurs responsible for the revitalization of these areas.
Moving further along you will discover the beating heart of the city lies in Kensington Market, Little Italy, Chinatown, Little Portugal, Greektown, and Little India. It is in these neighborhoods that you will see, feel and taste the vibrant mash-up of globalization and daily life coming together. If you really want to feel the beat, stick around for the ultimate street party Caribana, one of the largest Caribbean carnivals in the world. Caribana takes place July 30-August 1st.
To make use of the mild summer and early fall temperatures, Canadians have ingeniously packed their events calendar full of outdoor festivals. The festival organizers have strategically designed the programs to foster a new creative hub for art enthusiasts of all levels. By doing so, they have discovered that arts and music festivals attract an international crowd of repeat visitors.
As a return on their investment, the city of Toronto receives cutting edge art, innovative cultural programs and more importantly, art tourism dollars that trickle down to all sectors of the local economy.
The key to making this equation work is strong community outreach. Instead of maintaining the mystic of art as being exclusive and indecipherable, the Canadians have literally taken the arts to the streets. The annual Luminato Festival recently showcased ten days of city wide performances, exhibitions, and artist talks.
An example of public art was the installation by the visual arts collective, FriendsWithYou. The artists who are known for their vivid pop aesthetic and large scale outdoor installations transformed Queens Park into Rainbow City. The park was filled with towering inflatable totems, bounce houses and celestial creatures that invoked playful interaction for the young and old alike.
The hands down show stopper of Luminato was the theatrical production The African Trilogy. The production featured three individual plays Shine Your Light, Glo and Peggy Picket Sees the Face of God. Each play examined the multi-faceted relationship between Africa and the West by navigating the explosive questions ‘Just who do they think they are? Just who do they think we are? Just who do we think we are?’ The African Trilogy is smart, irreverent, challenging and brilliantly directed and acted.
During autumn the art party continues with the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival, September 9-19th. The film festival routinely attracts the Hollywood A-list as well as a half a million attendees each year.
From October 2-3rd the term Northern Lights will have new meaning with the Nuit Blanche Festival. Nuit Blanche features 24 hours of outdoor art installations that will light up the night sky throughout the city. The grand finale of Toronto’s arts festivals is Flash Forward, celebrating the work of emerging photographers, October 6-10th.
If you haven’t noticed by now, Canadians are crazy about art. If they don’t grab your attention outside, they will grab it when you try to go to sleep. At the Gladstone Hotel art is not something you simply hang on a wall, it is the hotel room itself. The 100 year old hotel features 37 artist designed rooms that showcase an individual theme for each room.
The Gladstone also presents a full schedule of exhibitions and an innovative Artist in Residence program for international artists who specifically want to create work in Toronto. On the luxurious end of the hotel spectrum, the newly opened Thompson Hotel has followed suit with a commissioned mural by Javier Mariscal, rooftop pool parties and celebrity DJ’s.
Believe it or not, Torontonians refer to food as ‘the art that feeds people’. The city’s chefs have expanded the palette of Canadian cuisine with an infusion of ethnic spices and inventive menus. The city’s eclectic mix of culinary tastes and styles can be best experienced at Origin, a popular St. Lawrence neighborhood restaurant.
The overall gourmet trend is on food that is local, natural, healthy and delicious. This mandate is easy to pull off due to Toronto’s close proximity to abundant farms, vineyards, and lakes. To highlight the city’s commitment to healthy food, Toronto will be hosting the first ever Conscious Food Festival, August 14-15th.
Say goodbye to flannel. Toronto is the hot new destination for all things crazy, sexy, cool.
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I wish you all the best….enjoy the sales awards while they last!
Toronto condo market hits ‘down’ button
Aug 15, 2010 … Though prices remain firm, sales have slowed and supply is surging in Canada’s condo capital.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/toronto-condo-market-hits-down-button/article1673760/
Why do I not think you mean that?
I can also play the quote-an-article game:
Homebuyers shouldn’t expect hot deals: experts
Sellers are facing more empty open houses and fewer bids on their homes, but experts say BUYERS SHOULDN’T EXPECT TO SEE A RETREAT FROM RECORD-HIGH HOME PRICES when July housing data is released Monday.
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20100815/housing-prices-100815/
And as your quote states “prices remain firm” which totally contradicts everything you have said previously. I guess you finally have to admit that prices are not dropping, eh?
Sales have slowed… wow… It is summer, when sales traditionally slow down. Heck, before sales took off, July is the month all real estate agents took off because nothing happened. So for sales to slow in that month is totally normal – in the general sense. But fall is when things tend to heat up again. If September sales are down 20-30% then I will eat my words. But I know that is not going to happen.
And if you read all the stats, then you will see that while June and July were down, year-to-date numbers are up over last year. As of July, Toronto real estate prices were up 6% from July 2009 and 12% year-to-date. Oh yes, national prices are up 1% from July 2009 and up almost 6% year-to-date. And national home sales volume was down almost 7%.
There is no bubble. There never was one. The market is not crashing. Interest rates are not rising. The sky is not falling, get used to it.
Toronto is also now the capital of declining real estate prices and suckers who bought in the last year!! Get ready for the Condo ass kicking about to happen!
That is so wrong I cannot even believe it. Toronto real estate prices are still rising, as they have since 1996. Taken from the latest TREB release:
“Notwithstanding the fact that price trends vary at the neighbourhood level in GTA, the average
price for July transactions was $420,482, representing a 6% increase over July 2009. Over the
first seven months of 2010, the average selling price was up 12% annually to $432,253.”
Yeah, suckers… I wish I had not bought and seen a 6-12% appreciation since last year. Where are you getting your information from? It is all well and good to spout forth like you are doing, but without data or information to back you up, you only look like some bitter naysayer. Mad because you cannot afford to buy where you want, is that it?
And as for the condo market collapsing, get real. Join the myriad “experts” who have been predicting that for the past 7-8 years. You have all been 100% wrong. The condo market grows every year, simple as that. It is a bit overheated at the moment, yes, but it will only slow down a touch – maybe. With around 270 condo projects in the GTA right now, it sure looks like there is a future. And all of those cranes you see – they only go up when the building is bought and paid for. They do not get built in hopes that people buy. Everything being built has been paid for already, so where is the risk? If a sales centre opens and does not sell enough to start construction, then the project does not go ahead.
Every day, more and more people turn 20 or 25, get married, divorced – you name it – and need a place to live. Around 100,000 people immigrate to Toronto very year and need somewhere to live. This is what is fueling the real estate market, the first time buyers. Who then become move-up buyers and so on down the line. Our economy is strong and growing (as evidence by shrinking unemployment and rising interest rates) which means people have money to buy real estate with. We have hopefully seen the end of the crazy new condo lines and bidding war chaos, but that just means a return to a robust and healthy real estate market.
Trust me Joe, this is what I do for a living, I know what I am talking about.
Laurin
I see … so because “you do this for a living” you are automatically an expert and everyone should listen to you?
Spoken like a true market pumping realtor.
This is the problem with most realtors in the GTA. They get their license after 6 “grueling” months and think they know it all. Telling their clients how real estate “always goes up in the long run”. But they leave out the runs where it goes down for 5 or 10 years. Take a look at the U.S. and try not to say it’s different in Canada like every other realtor.
And prices are not rising currently, they’re dropping. Sellers are lowering they’re price every day now as buyers realize how overvalued the market is.
Another completely incorrect quote by you….”Our economy is strong and growing (as evidence by shrinking unemployment and rising interest rates)”
Guess you didn’t notice one of the biggest full time job losses in recent history last month? Think those folks will be buying real estate any time soon?
Keep your eyes on the TREB stats for the next 12 months and a kleenex box close by for the tears.
I do not even know how to respond. I never said I was an expert, I used actual data to support myself. You did not. You are still making claims that are flat out wrong.
Come back with some real information to back up your incorrect claims next time.
I never said real estate always goes up in the long run, I just stated the fact that it has risen since the mid 1990s, which is backed up by MLS data. If I give any links to other real estate agents or TREB, you will just say that we are biased. So, click this link – http://tinyurl.com/2cyofv5 – to do the search yourself.
Can it go down in the future? Sure it can, though I see no reason for that to happen. And a lot of people agree with me. And even if there is a 5 year drop, prices will still rise over time. That is why movies do not cost a nickel anymore, like they did for Granddad.
Rising interest rates? Not likely, not when they are almost as low as they have ever been. Everyone says they will rise… they have not. When is this going to happen? A lot like the so-called experts who called for the Toronto condo market to crash – since 2003. When exactly did that happen? Oh yeah, it did not.
I work in the industry, you do not. I see all sorts of listings and numbers and data every day. You do not. So trust me when I tell you that sellers are not dropping their prices every day. How is the market over valued? Explain to me why it is. What is the correct average house value in Toronto and why is that number more right than the current one?
We live in a capitalist society, and thus the free market dictates prices. With almost 60,000 properties changing hands so far this year in the GTA, that means that 120,000 buyers and sellers agree on the current prices. What makes you know more than they do? What makes you know more than I do?
As for unemployment, this is taken directly from Stats Can at this page – http://www.statcan.gc.ca/subjects-sujets/labour-travail/lfs-epa/lfs-epa-eng.htm
“Following strong gains in recent months, employment was little changed in July, with large full-time declines mostly offset by part-time gains. The unemployment rate edged up 0.1 percentage points to 8.0%. Since the start of the upward trend in July 2009, employment has risen by 2.3%.”
So yes, there was a tiny 0.1% increase in unemployment last month, a 1.25% change. But my point was overall, not that specific. And with employment up by 2.3% in the past year, that proves my point. And I guess a lot of those people are buying real estate since the first 6 months of this year set records all over the place. As did the end of last year. In fact, we see records almost constantly since the start of 2006. So yeah, people seem to be buying a house or two around here.
I watch the TREB stats all the time my friend, that is how I can so easily refute you and your outlandish claims. And yeah, I sure am crying. I have to drive to the office tomorrow to pick up another sales award. I sure love this crappy market!
I am looking forward to your next rant.
Until then…