Tag Archives: international realty
Canada’s housing market drawing the big-money crowd
Sotheby’s finds more foreign buyers looking to Canada as a safe and stable place to live
Susan Pigg – Toronto Star
Sotheby’s International Realty is seeing a surge in demand from wealthy Syrians, Egyptians and Europeans looking for a safe and relatively stable place to park their millions — Canada’s softening real estate market.
There has been an uptick in “very significant transactions” in tony areas like Oakville and North Toronto by Europeans, many with young families who originally had planned to settle in the U.S. but fell in love with Canada instead, says Sotheby’s Canada CEO Ross McCredie.
At the same time, Montreal’s exclusive Westmount area has become top of the real estate wish list for high-net worth Syrians and Egyptians looking for a safe haven for their money and families, he added.
Increasingly, many of these deals — especially those over $10 million — aren’t even showing up in MLS sales tallies because of buyers seeking the privacy afforded by private or exclusive deals, or finalized under the cloak of a corporate purchase, McCredie noted.
“The lack of inventory is a big problem in the high-end market,” so agents are having to find their own properties rather than look to the MLS system, said Andy Taylor of Sotheby’s Toronto office, which has done more international business in the last 18 months than in the last six years.
“What we are seeing is very wealthy high-net worth individuals who see the Canadian real estate market as undervalued in their world, in terms of what else they are looking at and what else they own,” added McCredie.
“They see this as a stable country. They love our currency. And they see cities that have changed dramatically in the last 20 years and are much more appealing to an international buyer.”
In a bid to better understand who is buying, why and where, the high-end realty company — which just launched into the Canadian market eight years ago — undertook a survey of its top agents in over a dozen key cities and produced what it calls its first Top Tier Trends Report.
While there has been a softening in demand for homes over $2 million, especially in Vancouver and Toronto, since housing sales began their double-digit slump last summer, Canada remains firmly fixed on the radar for the growing number of millionaires and billionaires from Shanghai to Sydney, notes the report released Thursday.
Wealthy Canadians, of course, remain the dominant players in this niche market, but in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal they’ve been facing more competition, particularly in the last five years, from would-be Chinese, Russian, British and American buyers, it says.
Sotheby’s has seen heightened interest from Europeans, largely in Toronto real estate, since the euro crisis, says McCredie, adding that about 25% of its luxury sales in the Toronto area are to foreigners from the U.S., China, Russia, the Middle East and India.
Its percentage of foreign buyers is closer to 40% in Vancouver and 50% in Montreal, notes the report, according to Sotheby’s agents surveyed for the study.
Most are looking for iconic, spacious homes with very high-end finishes, but others are willing to pay what it takes just to get a great location — even if it means pumping millions more into the place in renovations, said McCredie.
Just six weeks ago, Sotheby’s recorded a record $4 million sale — the highest price ever paid for a semi-detached house in Toronto.
The 4,000-square-foot semi is in Yorkville. The buyer was local, but 30% of those looking at the well-appointed home were international buyers, said Taylor.
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416-388-1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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Toronto’s Wealthy Buyers Dragging Up Home Prices For Everyone
Rachel Mendleson – Huffington Post
High-income buyers are a driving force behind Toronto’s booming housing market, fueling demand for an extremely limited supply of properties in desirable areas, says one real estate broker.
According to Paul Maranger, a senior vice-president at Sotheby’s International Realty, this year has seen a surge in activity in the luxury real estate market in Toronto, as buyers increasingly chase a “Manhattan type of lifestyle.”
“Toronto at the luxury level is not looking for value. They’re looking for convenience,” he said on Thursday. “Many of our clients who work in the financial district, they’re working incredible hours at the office, and they are willing to pay a substantial premium to not have to do any extra work.”
Maranger was one of several real-estate experts made available to reporters on a conference call to discuss the BMO Spring Housing Report.
When it comes to the changing tastes of the wealthy, Maranger says the desire to walk to restaurants and the theatre is putting added pressure on properties in the city centre, and particularly single-family homes, which have become increasingly rare in Toronto due to a lack of available space.
Compared to the same period last year, Maranger says sales of “luxury” single-family homes ($2 million or more) in Toronto have so far increased by more than one-third, from 95 to 128.
Demand has been particularly strong along the subway lines, says Maranger, who cited the recent sale of a home in the Summerhill neighbourhood for more than $300,000 over the asking price as evidence of this trend.
“For a city the size of Toronto, we are grossly under-serviced from a subway perspective,” he said. “What we’ll see as a result of that, and what we’re seeing now, is a disproportionate demand, particularly along the Yonge subway corridor. Buyers are willing to pay a substantial premium to be on that line, and certainly on the [Bloor-Danforth] line.”
This increase in activity at the upper-end is rippling through the real-estate market, he says, pushing up prices of single-family dwellings across the city.
“There certainly is a Domino effect in the marketplace,” he said, noting that demand for detached homes just under the luxury level has grown feverish, with bidding wars and multiple offers becoming increasingly common.
“To get into the marketplace now […] the entry level price point is about half a million dollars, which is a substantial amount of money,” he added.
This observation adds weight to warnings of some observers, who have argued that growing income inequality may be ratcheting up house prices on the whole, and pricing low and middle-income earners out of the city centre.
Demand for single-family homes at the high-end combined with what Maranger describes as the tightest market he has seen in 15 years, has contributed to a boom in condo developments.
The recent increase in condo construction — and dampening demand in the formerly white hot Vancouver market — have prompted some to question the fundamentals of the Toronto market. But Maranger predicts activity at the high end of the market will remain strong.
“We have an incredibly strong base of high-income households who work predominantly in the financial district, and in financial law, education and health care,” he said. “From a mid-to long-term perspective, Toronto is going to hold itself in very good stead in the luxury market.”
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416−388−1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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Sotheby’s has high hopes for Toronto’s high end
Carolyn Ireland – Globe and Mail
At a time when pundits are watching for signs that Toronto’s housing market is cooling down, Ross McCredie is gearing up.
The chief executive officer of Sotheby’s International Realty Canada is adding a second Toronto office and new agents are signing on.
Mr. McCredie is sanguine about the top tier of the market, where Sotheby’s agents already glide between polished marble foyers.
Mr. McCredie was first drawn to Toronto by the opportunity to attach the Sotheby’s banner to condominium units in the Four Seasons Private Residences currently under construction in Yorkville.
The largest units were the quickest to sell – at prices as high as $1,500 to $1,800 a square foot, he says.
That venture went so well, and he has such high hopes for more such lucrative deals, Mr. McCredie says, that he has brought about 25 new agents onboard and expects to add another 25.
He points to the injection of capital from overseas, the line-up of five-star condo towers nearing completion, and a projection by Deloitte Services LP that the number of millionaire households in Canada will swell by 38% in 2020 from the 2011 tally.
A lot of attention is focused on investors based in China, he says, but other factors are at play too: The huge transfer of wealth from aging parents to their baby boomer offspring and the expectation that more homeowners in tony neighbourhoods such as Rosedale and Forest Hill will downsize and move into those Four Seasons condos.
“There’s a lifestyle change going on.”
There are a lot of Canadians with money and a lot of successful ex-pats are returning. They are the ones buying in Whistler, he points out.
And for those who don’t choose the Four Seasons, there are plenty of other ensuite dressing rooms being readied for the unpacking of Tom Ford moccasins and Christian Louboutin heels. The Residences at the Ritz-Carlton, Trump Tower, and Shangri-La are ready for occupancy or nearly so. Toronto has more condos coming on-stream than any other city in North America.
Oh and then there are the vacation properties in Florida or California that these buyers will be able to escape to when they are ensconced in their new turn-key lifestyles. Mr. McCredie wants Sotheby’s to help with the purchase of those too.
Mr. McCredie is not put off in the least by agents who say the high end of the market is slow – has been for months. Some say buyers in the upper echelons are wary amid all the turbulence in global financial markets. As for high-priced houses for sale in Rosedale that may go weeks without a showing, Mr. McCredie characterizes that as a perennial lament that can be explained by seasonal doldrums.
“Everything starts firing up in the spring again,” he says.
If there is a segment he worries about, it’s the mid-range condo market in Toronto. Those buyers, he cautions, are the most likely to be hurt if interest rates rise.
“I don’t see fire sales happening in Rosedale; I don’t see anything happening in Forest Hill.”
Those areas, along with traditional bastions like Westmount in Montreal or Shaugnessy in Vancouver, tend to fare better because homeowners are mostly well-established.
“Those are the markets that will hold up.”
He also travels the world and, in the past two years, the fervour of people who want to talk about investing in real estate here has only intensified.
“Canada is absolutely the darling of international markets now.”
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416-388-1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
—————————————————————————————————–
Incoming search terms
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