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http://www.thestranger.com/news/2016/05/04/24039262/more-growth-please More Growth Please The "Yes in My Backyard" Movement Builds in Seattle by Heidi Groover "Meditate on this," San Francisco activist Sonja Trauss tells a crowd in a conference room overlooking Lake Union. "What's the difference between being able to afford something that's not available... and not being able to afford something that is available?" The room sits in polite quiet. "Nothing," Trauss says emphatically. "There's no difference. These are both ways that [housing] shortage manifests." Trauss is preaching to the choir: a room of mostly white, mostly male Seattle developers working on plates of steak and green beans. You don't have to tell this group twice about the rules of supply and demand. But in another way, Trauss is screaming into the void. All across Seattle, small fights are playing out over whether new buildings—new housing—should be built. These are fights about the scale and height of new buildings, neighborhood character, and whether Seattle is losing its "soul." They are tedious and they are hurting housing affordability in this city. But for the most part, the only people paying attention to these fights are the people who want to stop the growth. People like the developers in this room, who believe Seattle needs more growth to meet its massive influx of new residents, rarely show up to advocate for new housing unless it's their own project in question. The rest of the city's residents—who, if recent city council election results are any indication, favor new density over parochial NIMBYism—don't often show up, either. Trauss, 34, is trying to change that in San Francisco and encouraging urbanists in Seattle to do the same. Trauss founded the San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation, a blunt, tech-funded, grassroots organization that advocates for more housing in and around San Francisco and was recently profiled in the New York Times as an indication of that city's "cries to build, baby, build." The group is one of many across the country organizing under the banner of YIMBY ("yes in my backyard"). Next month, YIMBYs will convene in Boulder, Colorado, for a conference with discussion topics like "forging healthy alliances between housing advocates and housing developers" and "responding to anti-housing ballot measures." "You guys actually have some non-industry pro-growth people," Trauss tells the Seattle developers. "Seattle has a lot of urbanists. It's just a matter of Laura actually starting a mailing list, and pretty soon you'll have your own pro-development citizen group." In the crowd sits Laura Bernstein, a 40-year-old renter in the University District who recently quit grad school to spend this year studying urbanism on her own and figuring out how to expand the YIMBY movement in Seattle. Before becoming a middle-school teacher, Bernstein studied opera and plant biology. Now she spends her days having coffee with other urbanists, going to community meetings, and running the Twitter account @YIMBYsea. At this time last year, Bernstein wouldn't be showing up in a story about YIMBYs. Then, she was working for a city council candidate who embodies the "not in my backyard" movement—Tony Provine. (By the end of his campaign, Provine was sending out mailers depicting bulldozers threatening to tear down single-family zones across the city. He lost in the primary with just 14 percent of the vote in his district.) Bernstein says when she started working for Provine, she thought he could serve as a bridge between pro-density urbanists and neighborhood advocates afraid of change. With enough reasoning, she thought, anybody could be convinced to welcome growth in their neighborhood. "All of that idealism went right out the window the minute I started knocking on doors and talking to voters," Bernstein tells me over Skype while she's in Vancouver to see an interactive art exhibit about growth there. Knocking on doors is when Bernstein says she began "hearing how cynical of downtown, cynical of politicians, and so put upon [homeowners were], like 'They're doing this to us.'" By "this," the neighbors mean growth. It's a common refrain in Seattle's density debate that developers or city officials are inflicting growth onto neighborhoods. In fact, of course, new people will move to Seattle whether we build for them or not. The only thing we have control over—unless we decide to build a wall—is whether we're prepared for those new residents. But Bernstein is holding on to some of her idealism. She doesn't like to use the term "NIMBY" and is deliberate about trying to meet with people she disagrees with. That sounds cheesy, but it makes her a rarity among the city's hardcore urbanists. On social media, Seattle urbanists can be a condescending, dick-swinging crowd, dismissing the lived experiences of displaced and struggling renters because they're busy shouting about the faultless wisdom of the free market. ("NIMBYs are literally the worst," one tweeted as I was writing this story. "Economic terrorists.") The city's well-meaning pro-tenants movement, meanwhile, peddles tired caricatures of greedy developers and focuses almost exclusively on rent control as the solution to Seattle's housing crisis. It's an exhausting split that accomplishes little, except alienating everyone in the middle. A group like SFBARF, led by renters and fighting for growth, could bridge some of that divide. Trauss is wholly pro-development—all types of it—but she also supports increased protections to keep renters from being "economically evicted" (when landlords dramatically raise rents to push out low-income tenants) and temporary rent control while supply catches up with demand. Some local density advocates are skeptical of the YIMBY movement. "Look at the math," Ben Schiendelman, a Seattle tech worker and outspoken pro-density provocateur, says of Trauss's efforts in San Francisco. "They don't win fights, and when they do, it's like for a handful of units in a building. In the time it takes to win those fights, you lose thousands of people out of the city." Schiendelman, 34, believes the only answer in Seattle and San Francisco alike is to get rid of zoning altogether. (Trauss's group is trying to sue the suburbs for restricting growth; Schiendelman supports that and says he's working on a similar lawsuit against Seattle.) Killing zoning would allow all sorts of building all over the city, he argues, creating a denser, more transit-rich city where poor and rich people live alongside each other. He has little patience for community organizing like Bernstein and others are doing. "People are becoming NIMBYs at a faster rate than you could talk them out of it," Schiendelman says. "The rate at which you could possibly organize [pro-growth] people is slower than the rate at which the city becomes less affordable." But a look at the public reaction to modest moves toward more density in Seattle shows what an unwinnable fight getting rid of zoning altogether could be. Last year, Mayor Ed Murray's housing affordability committee—known as HALA—recommended upzones to make certain parts of the city denser, reductions of expensive parking quotas, and new requirements that developers include affordable units in new apartment buildings or pay fees to help pay for new affordable housing. The neighborhood backlash was immediate, particularly against the recommendation to allow duplexes, triplexes, and backyard cottages in some of the city's single-family zones—which make up 65 percent of land (including parks) in Seattle. Meanwhile, others opposed HALA for different reasons. Developer lobbyist Roger Valdez argued the affordability requirements would make housing more expensive. Jon Grant, the former head of the Tenants Union of Washington State and a member of the HALA committee, criticized the recommendations for not including rent control and not charging enough fees on developers. In the middle, a coalition of developers and housing advocates have joined to form a group called "Seattle for Everyone," which encourages lawmakers and the public to support the HALA recommendations. In response to neighborhood backlash, Murray, joined by Council Members Tim Burgess and Mike O'Brien (who claims to be the council's environmental leader), backed away from the HALA recommendations. It will be up to activists like Bernstein to force that discussion back onto the table. With calls to abandon all zoning set as the extreme, allowing backyard cottages and duplexes becomes the moderate position in this debate. Bernstein says she's focused on what happens after HALA is done. The YIMBY movement "is here," she says. "I think we're a super YIMBY city." Back at the developer dinner, Trauss urges builders to show up at meetings and comment in favor of each other's projects and to do an industry survey of their salaries to try to make the point that they're not all getting rich. In San Francisco, she's looking ahead to May 10, when she's asking YIMBYs to all show up and vote in an election on the same day to show that they're a real constituency. "At the end of the day, some people just hate growth and there's nothing you can do," she tells the room. "You're never going to convince that person, so that's fine. Don't waste your energy. You just have to say, 'See you at the ballot box.'" recommended Sent from my SM-T330NU using Tapatalk
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Québecers believe now is a good time to buy property. http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/the-montreal-housing-market-exceeded-forecasts-in-2015-565111581.html
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We shouldn't expect to see many more condo towers going up in the short term... "Regarding condominiums, the inventory of unsold units will remain at a relatively high level. The need for new units will remain limited in 2016 and 2017" http://m.marketwired.com/press-release/housing-market-outlook-for-2016-and-2017-montreal-cma-2066846.htm Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Greece | Oil | Keystone XL | RRSPs | BoC | Apple | Target | Bombardier How the falling loonie and low rates could lure more foreign investors to Canadian housing Republish Reprint Garry Marr | February 26, 2015 | Last Updated: Feb 26 7:12 PM ET More from Garry Marr | @DustyWallet Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Email Typo? More Jason Payne/Postmedia News, file Jason Payne/Postmedia News, fileLennon Sweeting, a Toronto-based dealer with US Forex which trades in currencies, says the loonie is making housing more attractive to foreign buyers. Canada’s two priciest housing markets may not need the boost, but Toronto and Vancouver could be on the verge of a spike in foreign investment. Toronto's rental market reborn as housing prices surge out of reach for many ‘There’s a huge demand for rental… We are seeing for the first time in 40 years people are starting to build rental,’ says managing director of Timbercreek Asset Management With the loonie falling about 10% against the U.S. dollar in the last six months, foreigners who have their money parked in greenbacks or in currencies pegged to the American dollar are likely to ramp up their interest in the Canadian marketplace, say industry experts. Alberta, which is now facing a crunch of new listings and weak demand, is unlikely to see any benefit as investors run away from the province over oil price fears. “The reputation of the oilpatch here has been tarnished a bit,” says Dan Scarrow, the Shanghai-based managing director of Canadian Real Estate Investment Centre, which was set up just two months ago, and is run by Vancouver-based Macdonald Real Estate Group. He says the opposite is true in Vancouver and Toronto, where prices in January were up 7.5% and 6.1% respectively from a year ago, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. “With the Chinese economy slowing down a bit and with the Canadian dollar depreciating 20% versus the RMB, it might change the calculus of some people of how much they want to leave in China and how much they want to bring to Canada.” To [foreign investors], the Canadian market has gone on sale Mr. Scarrow’s firm caused a stir last year with data it produced from its client base that showed 33.5% of all single-family homes sales in the Vancouver area could be traced to buyers from mainland China. Foreign buyers and their position in the marketplace have been a concern for some market watchers, who fear these investors are inflating housing prices. But there hasn’t been definitive data. Even the chief executive of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., Evan Siddall, conceded there were data gaps. The Crown corporation finally produced data two months ago on the condominium market that showed as much as 2.4% of Toronto highrises were in foreign hands and 2.3% in Vancouver, with some people still disputing those findings. Mr. Scarrow says in terms of Chinese investors they are divided between people still living overseas and people already living in Canada but with money still parked in RMBs. With Chinese New Year over, he expects investment to pick up. Related Foreign buyers taking over — this time it's Canadians in Florida IMF says housing in Canada overvalued by as much as 20% “Decisions have been held off until this week,” he says. “There is a lag for these things in terms of stats and what we see on the ground.” Brian Johnston, chief operating officer of Toronto-based Mattamy Homes, has never been a believer of the idea that foreign investment was a huge factor in Canadian housing, but he says when you get can a 10% to 20% currency swing it has to be positive. “To [foreign investors], the Canadian market has gone on sale,” said Mr. Johnston, noting his company also develops property in the United States it tries to sell to Canadians. “The reverse is true for them. The price of U.S. real estate just went up by 10%.” Lennon Sweeting, a Toront0-based dealer with US Forex which trades in currencies, says the loonie is making housing more attractive to foreign buyers. “The Bank of Canada has tried to offset lower prices with a weaker currency making investing in Canada more attractive,” said Mr. Sweeting, adding most high net worth investors are likely holding U.S. dollars right now. “Absolutely it makes it easier to buy [Canadian real estate]. If you’re holding U.S. dollars you are looking at buying at a discount and there’s plenty of supply.” Low interest rates have also boosted demand, even though foreign investors tend to have to put up larger down payments when borrowing to buy property. Shaun Hildebrand, senior vice-president at condo research firm Urbanation Inc., noted new condo sales in the Greater Toronto Area in 2014 rose over 50% from a year ago but it’s hard to pinpoint how much is attributable to foreign investors. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see more foreign investment in 2015,” said Mr. Hildebrand, adding surveys of Urbanation clients peg the foreign component of Toronto’s condo market at just under 5%. sent via Tapatalk -
Wealthy Global Buyers Favoring Montreal Spur 17% Gains By Greg Quinn - Dec 4, 2013 11:09 AM GMT-0500 International buyers have thrust Montreal, a city sometimes overshadowed by Toronto and Vancouver, into the national spotlight. Montreal, known for its crumbling water pipes and bridges as much as its cobblestone streets, now stands out for drawing the biggest share of foreign owners. They purchased 49 percent of the 206 homes worth at least C$1 million in the first half of 2013, according to a Sotheby’s International Realty Canada report and survey of brokers. In Vancouver, which boasts a rugged Pacific coastline and cultural ties to Asia, 40 percent of buyers of 1,239 such homes were from abroad. Toronto, which has filled its skyline with condo towers over the last decade, had the smallest portion of international owners, making up 25 percent of 2,947 deals. “The share of foreign buying in the Montreal luxury market surprises me,” said Craig Alexander, chief economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank. (TD) “When we think about the presence of international buyers we tend to think about Vancouver and Toronto.” 16.9% Gain International buyers are shoring up high-end housing in Canada after regulators tightened mortgage rules in 2012 to cool the nation’s booming market. In Montreal, prices of bungalows of around 1,200 square feet (111 square meters) rose as much as 5.4 percent in the third quarter from a year ago, according to figures from Toronto-based Royal LePage Real Estate Services. Dwellings of at least 3,000 square feet worth about C$2.47 million in the Westmount area gained 16.9 percent in the same period. In Vancouver and Toronto, price growth of luxury housing in some neighborhoods also outpaced less costly homes, the data show. Julie Dickson, who heads the Ottawa-based Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, said scant data makes it difficult to determine the impact of foreign buyers on the market. “There is anecdotal evidence at a minimum that foreign investment plays a big role, particularly in Vancouver. And while I think that means Canada is a great place to do business, it also is a risk because it can dry up quickly,” Dickson said during a Nov. 25 presentation in Toronto. Full article ici. -
Urban shift is reshaping Montreal Montreal will be a much greyer city 20 years from now, and the aging of our populace will influence everything from home design to urban architecture to public transportation. It will also be a more multi-coloured city, measured in terms of skin tone, and multi-linguistic, too, as new legions of immigrants flow in, altering its face, flavour and sound. It will be more condensed, with condominiums overtaking expensive single-family homes as the lodging of choice for first-time homebuyers. And it will be a poorer city mired in a heavily indebted province, forcing it to focus on necessities like rebuilding roads and paring down bureaucracies and services rather than investing in grand designs like megaprojects or metro extensions. Economic imperatives will force Montreal to focus on what it’s good at to survive — namely, being itself. The city will endure by hosting festivals and conferences, promoting its flourishing arts scene, throwing successful, peaceful street parties for hundreds of thousands at a time and inviting the world to come. It will market itself as a vibrant, fun, creative place to live, and a coveted vacation destination for legions of retired baby boomers with time on their hands and savings to burn. This in turn will lead the city to become more accommodating to pedestrians and cyclists, with stretches of thoroughfares like Crescent and Ste. Catherine Sts. becoming pedestrian-only enclaves. This is the Montreal 2033 vision of McGill University architecture professor and housing expert Avi Friedman. Author of 12 books on housing and sustainable development, he is called on by cities throughout the world to consult on urban development and wealth generation. He sees in Montreal’s future a metropolis that will be poorer, still paying for past transgressions of inept infrastructure design and inadequate maintenance. But at the same time, it will be buoyed by its four major universities and its cachet as one of the cool hangouts in the vast North American neighbourhood, a magnet for tourist dollars, immigrants and creative minds. “Montreal is a brand. We’re not talking about Hamilton or Markham or Windsor. Montreal is a brand. But we need to learn how to use our brand better,” he said. Statistics Canada released figures in the fall that indicated Montreal was becoming a city of singles. Nearly 41 per cent of its residents who reside in a private dwelling live on their own, as compared to 30 per cent in most large Canadian cities. Our aging population, large number of university students, exodus of families to the suburbs, low immigration numbers and high percentage of apartments are largely the cause. The numbers spurred Friedman to ponder where the city he’s lived in for more than three decades will be in 2033. Major urban shifts, he notes, generally take about 20 years to evolve. “I wasn’t looking for pie-in-the-sky ideas, not Jetsons-type futuristic predictions, just reasonable assumptions based on trends we are already seeing today.” The greatest influence will come from the aging of the huge demographic wave that is the baby boomer generation, which will be between 70 and 87 years old in 20 years. Most will no longer be working, or paying as much in taxes. “Montreal, like other eastern cities, is going to be a poorer city than it is today, which is likely to force greater efficiency of all operations and institutions,” Friedman said. “We will have to learn to do more with less.” As families shrink (the average family size has gone from 3.5 individuals in 1970 to 2.5 in 2006), and house prices rise, demand for smaller living units will increase. The era of the single-family house as a starter home within the city limits will be a thing of the past for most, as it has been in many European cities for a long time, Friedman said. First-time buyers, many of them young families, will move into the many condominium projects sprouting downtown. Older boomers will shift from their suburban homes to condominiums. The ratio of family homes to condominiums, now at a roughly 60-40 split, will probably reverse during the next two decades, he predicted. Already densely populated neighbourhoods like Notre Dame de Grâce will see residents and developers building upward, putting additional floors on houses or commercial buildings to add residential space. (In congested Vancouver, developers have already started stacking condominium complexes on top of big-box stores like Walmart and Home Depot.) Homeowners will transform their basements into separate apartments, and the division of single-family homes into separate units to take in two or more families will proliferate. Houses will be transformed as more people opt to work out of home offices, or as retirees alter their living spaces to pursue their hobbies or their work. And seniors will make room for live-in nannies and nurses to help care for them. There will also be more grab-bars, ramps and in-house escalators. Technological advances will allow many routine hospital procedures to be done at home via computer. Patients will be able to check their blood pressure and other health indicators at home and send the information to their caregivers over the Internet, all the while chatting with nurses or doctors face-to-face via Skype. “Aging in place will be on the upswing,” Friedman said. “There will be less and less reason for hospital visits.” The new superhospitals going up downtown and in N.D.G. will also spur residential development as thousands of hospital workers seek housing nearby. Condominiums have started sprouting already near the hospitals, and close to the métro stations and train stations that serve them. Private medical clinics, for locals and foreigners alike, will be built around and even in hospitals, as the cash-strapped government off-loads more services to the private sector for wealthier clients not willing, for example, to wait three years for a hip replacement. The condominium boom, well underway in Montreal and reaching the saturation point, will continue, although at a slower pace. Montreal is on the verge of a condo crash, Friedman predicted, part of the normal ebb and flow of residential construction that regenerates every five years. “You will hear about bankruptcies, about people going under, all sorts of bad stories. This is common. Then there will be a burst of energy and another wave.” Condominium developers will start incorporating more family-friendly features like larger units, terrace gardens and parks on their properties. Condo towers with shops and restaurants on the ground floor will become more common, as will the SOHO concept (Self-Office, Home Office) common in China, where residences are located on upper floors and small offices on lower floors, and people commute by elevator. Many boomers, liberated from their children and their jobs, will give up their suburban homes to live closer to services and entertainment and downtown. Their influx will spur elderly-friendly changes seen in other cities, such as automatic doors at unwieldy metro entrances. Métro stations will become poles of residential development, followed closely by commercial properties to serve the influx of people. Suburbs like the West Island will see more low-level condominiums of four to six storeys, and available land between municipalities will be slowly colonized, making for one continuous metropolis. The densification, with housing projects like those in Griffintown bringing tens of thousands of residents into the downtown core, will result in an even more active and vibrant city, with offshoots of more shops, restaurants, services and life downtown. Neighbourhoods like St-Henri, Rosemont and Park Extension, relatively close to downtown and well-served by public transit, will be the next regions to see a slow gentrification, Friedman predicted. In a sense, we will mirror Toronto’s growth, but on a smaller scale and with a Montreal twist. “In 20 years, downtown Montreal will be populated by many more people who will bring their flavour, their lifestyle and their unique Montreal brand, with things like after-hours clubs, which is not Toronto,” Friedman said. “This is a fun city, with restaurants and pubs and clubs. I believe it will be a fun place.” Friedman sees Montreal’s four major universities and an increase in immigration quotas to make up for low birthrates as other major drivers of change, with immigrants coming from burgeoning regions like Asia and Latin America and settling in the north and east of the city. Already, roughly 10 per cent of the students in Friedman’s bachelor’s-level architecture classes are from mainland China. Montreal needs to do more to attract the droves of computer engineers from places like China, India and Pakistan who currently see California as their first choice. And tourism, with the many jobs it brings, will be Montreal’s bread and butter. At this phase in its history, Friedman sees Montreal as a city bogged down by the sins of its past, fixated on corruption and mismanagement and with no sense of a grand vision coming from city hall. Things will get more difficult from an economic standpoint, and “poorer cities do nothing. If you have wealth, you can change things,” he said, pointing to bike and public-transit friendly European cities like Copenhagen, Helsinki, Amsterdam and Berlin as examples. There is hope for Montreal’s future, Friedman said. It is articulated in the plethora of condominium towers and cranes on its skyline, in Montreal’s reputation for its joie-de-vivre attitude, open-mindedness and its artistic energy, a magnet for the young, adventurous and creative. But the hope is tempered with this caveat: the successful cities that Friedman has observed, are those whose citizens are willing to enforce change, as opposed to hoping city councillors will do it for them. “Do-it-yourself cities are the successful cities. We have to ask ourselves ‘Are we a forwards city, or a backwards one?’ ” Developments already underway provide an indication of the answer. “The densification of the core we’re seeing here will bring life,” he said, gazing up at the condominium towers growing like mighty redwoods of metal and glass in Griffintown. “This city will be a hopping place.” Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Urban+shift+reshaping+Montreal/8071854/story.html#ixzz2NF8glXu5
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Series of articles in today's Gazette
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New housing numbers point to soft landing FEBRUARY 15, 2013
un sujet a posté IluvMTL dans L'actualité
By Jay Bryan, Special to Gazette February 15, 2013 8:04 PM Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/homes/Bryan+housing+numbers+point+soft+landing/7973381/story.html#ixzz2L1fXbpfN MONTREAL — For more than a year, there have been two competing narratives about the future path of Canada’s high-flying housing market: total collapse and moderate decline. The moderates, if we can call them that, still seem to me to have the better argument, especially when you consider the unexpectedly upbeat housing resale figures last month. Friday’s report from the Canadian Real Estate Association demonstrates that national home sales continue to be significantly lower than those of a year ago, but that virtually all of this decline happened abruptly last August, reflecting a tough squeeze on mortgage-lending conditions in July by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Since then, however, there’s been no further month-to-month downtrend, notes CREA chief economist Gregory Klump. Prices, which don’t necessarily track sales right away, have also weakened, but less. While sales are down five per cent from one year ago, average national prices are actually up by three per cent, as measured by the CREA Home Price Index. However, this year-over-year price gain has slid gradually from the 4.5 per cent recorded in July. What’s the bottom line? In my opinion, it’s that the catastrophist scenario detailed not just by eccentric bloggers but also in national newspapers and magazines, looks increasingly unlikely. That’s not to say this outcome is utterly impossible. At least one highly regarded consulting firm, Capital Economics, has been predicting for two years that this country faces a 25-per-cent plunge in average home prices. This is the kind of drop — almost comparable to the 30-per-cent-plus crash in the U.S. — that would probably trigger a bad recession, especially in today’s environment of subdued economic growth. David Madani, the economist responsible for this frightening prediction, understands the housing numbers very well, but he simply doesn’t share most other analysts’ relative equanimity about what they mean. Yes, Canada’s banks are financially stronger and more prudent in their lending than their U.S. counterparts, he acknowledges, and yes, there’s little evidence of the fraud and regulatory irresponsibility that worsened the U.S. catastrophe, but he sees the psychology of overoptimistic buyers as uncomfortably similar. What looks like enormous overbuilding of condos in the hot Toronto market help to make his point, as does the still-stratospheric price of Vancouver housing. Madani certainly has a point, but the countervailing evidence seems even stronger. A key example is the behaviour of Canada’s housing market over the past six months. The latest squeeze on mortgage lending, the fourth in five years, is also the toughest, points out economist Robert Kavcic of BMO Capital Markets. It drove up the cost of carrying a typical loan by nearly one percentage point, or about $150 a month on a $300,000 mortgage. And as this shock was hitting the housing market, Canada’s employment growth was slowing. In a market held aloft by speculative psychology, it seems very likely that such a hammer blow would bring about the very crash that pessimists have been predicting. Instead, though, the market reacted pretty much as it had during previous rounds of Flaherty’s campaign to rein in the housing market, notes Derek Burleton, deputy chief economist at the TD Bank. Sales dropped moderately, but the decline didn’t feed on itself as it would in an environment of collapsing speculative hopes. Instead, the market proved to be rather resilient, with sales plateauing and then actually rising a bit in January. Burleton, along with Kavcic and Robert Hogue, an economist at the Royal Bank who follows housing, believe that we’ve already seen most of the market downside that will result from Flaherty’s move. Jay Bryan: New housing numbers point to soft landing This doesn’t mean that the market is out of the woods. It’s still overvalued, not hugely, but by something like 10 per cent, Burleton estimates. But moderate overvaluation can persist for years unless the market is hit by some shock to incomes or interest rates. While there’s no agreement on the path prices take from here, some of these analysts think they’ll drift down slowly, maybe three to eight per cent over a few years. At the same time, rising take-home pay will be shrinking the amount of overvaluation, creating a more sustainable market. Let’s hope they’re right. bryancolumn@gmail.com © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/homes/Bryan+housing+numbers+point+soft+landing/7973381/story.html#ixzz2L1ew0d8Y -
http://www.westislandgazette.com/news/28915 Dorval considering options for major facelift City wants public input on its draft of master urban plan Albert Kramberger The Gazette Wednesday, March 14, 2012 The city of Dorval is looking to make a few changes in how it looks - everything from revitalizing its waterfront to giving Dorval Ave. a facelift. The next step in preparing a new sustainable master urban plan is a public consultation set for March 26. The city has prepared a draft of its master plan, a general statement of the direction the city should follow over the next two decades regarding development, zoning and quality of life concerns as well as promoting and encouraging "greener" options. It now hopes to gauge input from citizens before adopting the formal version later this fall, said Mayor Edgar Rouleau. Among its proposals, the city aims to make its waterfront along Lake St. Louis more user-friendly and animated, possibly installing outdoor exercise equipment at Millennium Park. As well, it will consider purchasing select private lands near existing cityowned sites, like the Forest and Stream Club, should they ever come on the market, the mayor said. "There are sites along Lakeshore that may, in five or 10 years, become available and the council should at that time evaluate if it's worthwhile to acquire," Rouleau said of potentially adding to publicly owned space along the lake. "Is it going to expensive? As you know, yes." While the city is also looking at encouraging highdensity residential develop-ment, especially around the Pine Beach and Dorval train stations and along Bouchard Blvd., it will have to be measured in light of respecting the single-family home residential character in much of the city. There is also a goal to reverse an aging demographic trend by attracting young families and immigrants, the latter of which are expected to account for more than 30 per cent of Dorval's population by 2024. As of 2011, Dorval had about 18,615 residents and approximately 8,000 households, with an additional 2,000 housing units envisioned by the city within a decade, including more affordable housing. "Residents want the population to increase, but they don't want to lose that residential sector that we have," Rouleau said. "We're not going to change that, except those few big lots we have, like the one at the corner of De la Presentation and Lakeshore, which will soon be developed," he said. The city also aims to revitalize the commercial area on Dorval Ave. and make it more attractive. For example, by allowing outdoor terraces, and making it safer for both pedestrians and cyclists. A study has already been commissioned to prepare some proposals, the mayor said. "We want it more friendly, but the challenge is that we cannot widen the road," Rouleau said of Dorval Ave. "Whatever we extend, we have to take it from somewhere else. Right now it's two lanes each way with an island in the middle and sidewalks on both sides," he said, adding that perhaps the avenue could be reduced to one lane in each direction with a narrow median strip to allow for something like a bike path.
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Quartier Meadowbrook / Petite-Rivière
un sujet a posté CFurtado dans Projets oubliés et/ou en suspens
MONTREAL – The central-city administration didn’t open the door any further Monday night to preserving the 57-hectare Meadowbrook green space. But Alan DeSousa, vice-chairman of the city executive committee, didn’t slam it shut, either – not with about 375 anti-development protesters who converged on city hall trying to save the West End site hanging onto his words. “We’re ready to see what we can do to support a local community consensus” on Meadowbrook’s future, he told Patrick Asch of the Les Amis de Meadowbrook citizens’ coalition, which wants the entire site preserved as a public park. A Miami Beach condo developer, Michael Bedzow of Pacific Group Canada, wants to build 1,500 housing units on the site, which has been a private golf course for about a century. Meadowbrook hosts a broad range of wildlife, including foxes, rabbits and birds. It straddles the Lachine borough and Côte St. Luc, and is located near rail yards. Asch and other questioners tried repeatedly to get Mayor Gérald Tremblay to commit to preservation. But the mayor left it to DeSousa to do all the talking on his behalf. The site is already partly zoned for development. Last night’s occasionally loud crowd demonstrates broad support for the site’s preservation, Asch said. The site is “irreplaceable and one of the few natural green spaces left in Montreal,” he added. “Residents across the island will not accept the destruction of Meadowbrook.” Tremblay’s continuing silence on the issue is “deafening – and very suspicious,” Asch said. The site’s preservation is part of a May 2009 report that is to be voted on Thursday by Montreal Island’s agglomeration council. DeSousa said that report doesn’t deal with golf courses. On April 15, Karel Mayrand, Quebec executive director of the David Suzuki Foundation, wrote to Tremblay asking him to act “to preserve all of Meadowbrook as a nature park.” The Pacific Group housing plan – which features Plateau Mont Royal density levels – would represent “destruction for short-term private gain,” Mayrand added. Projet Montréal has already endorsed Meadowbrook’s preservation in full as a public park, said party leader Richard Bergeron. janr@thegazette.canwest.com © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/City+commit+Meadowbrook/2926786/story.html#ixzz0leaaJ97g -
The Toronto Board of Trade's Scorecard on Prosperity ranks 24 cities based on economy and labour attractiveness #20 Montreal (Courtesy of The Globe and Mail)
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(Courtesy of The Financial Post) Courtesy of The Economist (Courtesy of the Business Insider) -
Montreal Real Estate Pushes Ahead By DORN TOWNSEND Published: June 11, 2010 MONTREAL — When Patrice Groleau began selling a proposed condo development this spring, he thought it would take about a year to sell all 100 units — even though the site is in Montreal’s historic old city and the project will have all the latest amenities. Half the apartments sold in the first month on the market. “The last few years have been mostly good for real estate, but this year has been phenomenal,” said the 33-year-old broker, who works for McGill Immobilier. “Some of the buyers are from elsewhere but 95 percent are local young professionals. A lot of them will buy several units or whole blocks of apartments.” Real estate markets in many cities around the world are still in the doldrums, but in Montreal, Canada’s second largest city, with 1.9 million residents, the downtown area is experiencing a boom and buying frenzy last seen more than a generation ago. Brokers say that new listings in desirable central neighborhoods can receive multiple offers within hours of going up for sale. Since 2003, when the present rush began, 5,500 to 7,000 new condo units have been hitting the market each year. Many of these homes are downtown in new mid-rise developments. According to the Montreal Real Estate Board, the median price of downtown condos has risen about 9 percent over the period, to 210,000 Canadian dollars, or about $198,000. While some downtown addresses can command as much as 1,000 dollars a square foot, in May the average price per square foot in the central city was about 350 dollars. “A lot of the new units downtown are for people in the suburbs looking to downsize, but you also get about 8 percent of sales going to foreigners,” said René Lépine, president of Groupe Lépine, one of the largest developers of downtown residential housing in the city. “I haven’t seen this kind of activity in the city center since the 1970s, when we had the Olympics.” Montreal’s real estate board reported that prices were up 8 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, with sales up 54 percent. While there is disagreement over whether such growth is sustainable, demand is being driven by historically low interest rates, with a five-year fixed-rate mortgage going for about 3.8 percent. In an attempt to pop what many fear is an expanding housing bubble, the Bank of Canada in April began requiring purchasers to put down 20 percent on investment properties. Brokers, however, say such rules are easily skirted with interim financing. And in the two years since the global economic downturn, Canada’s big-five banking oligopoly has continued granting loans for real estate. But, like in the United States, these banks seldom hold on to the mortgages, instead passing them on to a government entity called the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., which insures buyers against defaults. Since 2005, the agency’s liabilities have grown to around 400 billion dollars from about 80 billion dollars. But many of the new homes insured by this national agency are the tiny studios and one-bedroom units like those in Montreal’s downtown towers. That easy financing helped turn Montreal’s real estate scene into something of a Sleeping Beauty story. For decades the city had a lot of real estate for sale, partly because of the departure of several hundred thousand English-speaking residents from 1976 to 1978 because they feared Quebec might become an independent French-speaking country. Afterward, prices rose slowly, and then took off in recent years. “I’m not one of those annoying people who say that Montreal is the best city,” said Ariane Truong, 30, a Montreal native who spent several years in London working as an architect for SOM. “But there’s this intangible, aesthetic quality here these days and when you’re in other cities, you notice that quality is missing.” Two years ago Mrs. Truong returned to her hometown, paying about 350,000 dollars for a refurbished 950-square-foot, or 88-square-meter, one-bedroom condo in the old city. The building incorporates part of the stone fortifications built from 1717 to 1738 to protect Montreal from native Indians and English attackers. Until recently many residents had spurned the area as a tourist magnet. These days the tourists still are ever-present, but the old warehouses have been converted into apartments with ground-floor cafes and restaurants. A mix of young professional residents has returned to live and work. A small but important part of the market is composed of foreign clients who buy into the city for its particular rhythm. Diane Urbain, 28, a transplant from Paris, is typical of the group. She and her husband spent about 520,000 dollars on a 1,600-square-foot cottage in the Plateau, a large neighborhood of row houses known for its public squares and cafes. The French consulate says about 100,000 French citizens are living in Montreal. “When I first arrived here as a student, I thought I’d never leave Paris,” Mrs. Urbain said “But I’ve come to love the way of life of this city.” She talked about the nearby parks where her children play and about biking to work. Vélo Québec, a cycling advocacy group, says that nearly 20 percent of downtown residents use bicycles as a primary means of transport. Yet the French are not the only people who choose Montreal. This year, almost all the units in one new high-end condo tower downtown were sold to Lebanese. The developer marketed heavily in Beirut, and many purchases were made as investments or as homes for children attending universities in Montreal. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/greathomesanddestinations/11iht-remon.html
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(Courtesy of The New York Times)
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s McGill University becoming the Donald Trump of higher education? First the school purchased the Renaissance Hotel on Park Ave. in 2003 to turn it into a dormitory, and now it’s apparently in the market to buy the Four Points Sheraton on Sherbrooke St. W., two blocks east of the downtown campus. Science student Billi Wun, vice-president of the First Year Council, told the students’ society newspaper The McGill Tribune this week that FYC president Sean Husband confirmed the news. Husband, whom Wun described as the liaison with the First Year Office, informed the council there are negotiations between McGill and the hotel. Spokespeople for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., parent company of the 196-room Four Points, didn’t return calls to headquarters in White Plains, N.Y. “McGill has a policy of not discussing real estate transactions in public,” university spokesman Doug Sweet said on Thursday. Maintaining that no-comment rule, the executive director of residences and student housing did acknowledge that McGill operates at a 97.5 per cent occupancy rate. “We’re generally full and over at the beginning of the year,” Michael Porritt said, referring to the approximately 2,800 mostly first-year students housed annually. Porritt said the former Renaissance Hotel that McGill transformed into a 700-bed dorm in the the fall of 2003 is regularly at 99 per cent occupancy. There is other off-campus housing at McGill-owned Selwyn Hall in St. Henri as well as property leased at the Presbyterian College on University St. and an apartment building on Ste. Catherine St. W. Jean Lortie, president of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux’s commercial wing that represents hotel workers, said he is skeptical about such a deal. A search by the union found no proof of a transaction or request with the city for a zoning change. Instead, he suggested it’s an employer pressure tactic to end a labour conflict at the Four Points – where about 90 workers have been on strike since last Aug. 25. Lortie recalled that when there was a walkout at the Hotel Omni Mont-Royal further west on Sherbrooke in 2005, “there were rumours it was being sold to McGill.” The university never disclosed what it paid for the Renaissance, but it did cash in a $150-million, 40-year bond for the acquisition. mking@thegazette.canwest.com
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USA : Urban areas see revival in housing construction
un sujet a posté ErickMontreal dans L'actualité
Urban areas see revival in housing construction http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2009-03-10-urban-construction_N.htm?csp=34 -
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Masters of the Universe have been dethroned. Now the question is just how much Wall Street's meltdown is going to hurt the city of New York and, by extension, its high-priced housing market. Even in a city where $20 million townhouse listings don't raise an eyebrow, signs of trouble abound. Fourth quarter 2008 sales volume was down a whopping 40% from 2007 according to New York brokerage the Corcoran Group. And the average price of existing homes dropped 3.6% during the same period. The S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index showed a price decline of 8.6% for the New York metro area, including the city and the surrounding suburbs, for the 12 months ending November 30. New York's economy runs on Wall Street money, and after the failure of Lehman Brothers and the sales of both Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, there isn't nearly as much of it as there used to be. After the financial markets imploded, the New York real estate market "stopped dead," said Dottie Herman, CEO of broker Prudential Douglas Elliman. "If you think you're going to lose your job, you're not going to buy. [We're] a long way off from the past couple of years." Whereas bidding wars were once commonplace, city apartments are now languishing on the market. Leonard Steinberg, a Prudential Douglas-Elliman agent who handles many high end listings, has been trying to move a $1.2 million condo located in the Chelsea part of town for more than a year. The home was originally priced at $1.4 million. Gotham's grim outlook And the city's economic conditions are only getting worse. On Friday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced $1 billion worth of budget cuts as Gotham steels itself against a rapidly dwindling tax base. Its coffers are expected to dwindle by a stunning $4.1 billion for fiscal 2009, which ends June 30, thanks to the economic turmoil. Perhaps it's no surprise then that Goldman Sachs recently issued a report predicting that New York City's normally-stratospheric prices will fall as much as 44%. And investors betting on derivatives based on the Case-Shiller Home Price Index aren't much more optimistic. They're betting that New York prices will tumble over 21% over the next 4 years. Jobs are the obvious problem. Some 65,000 payroll jobs were lost in the last three months of 2008 alone, according to the city Comptroller's office. New York's unemployment rate jumped to 7.4% in December, up from 6.3% in November. Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a premier appraisal firm in the city, said that financial market turmoil could hit home prices harder in New York than anywhere else. "It's more exposed than other metro areas to financial industry job losses," Miller said. And Wall Street types who are lucky enough to hang onto their jobs have seen their 2008 bonuses slashed by 44% compared with 2007 levels. If New York City does somehow manage to dodge the real estate bullet that's crippled so many other metro areas nationwide, it may be thanks to some of the market's unique qualities. "We didn't have the rampant speculation that many places had," said Miller, who cited cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas. Most New York buildings require buyers to run their finances by a coop board for approval, and to put down at least 20%. And, by virtue of its limited size, the city didn't experience the kind of rampant overbuilding that places like the Sun Belt saw. Additionally, the city is benefiting from the overall trend toward urban living that should help maintain demand for housing. "Our findings indicate that upper-middle and high-income households have increasingly chosen to reside in the city, said city Comptroller William Thompson, "suggesting that our city may be more resilient to this economic downturn than in 1990 when companies and families were fleeing New York." All that, however, only helps so much. Any time you subtract billions of dollars from a local economy there will be vast ripple effects. Restaurants, retail putfits and of course, real estate will all suffer. Said Miller: "We're going to have to go through more pain before things get better."
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Plan for 'private casino' in Snowdon faces stiff fight
un sujet a posté ErickMontreal dans L'actualité
Plan for 'private casino' in Snowdon faces stiff fight By Andy Riga, The GazetteJanuary 30, 2009Comments (3) A brand new private betting parlour on Décarie Blvd. in Snowdon? Don’t bet on it just yet. Community groups, the city of Montreal and an anti-gambling coalition say they will oppose a proposal to create the venue – to feature 300 video-lottery terminals as well as betting on televised horse races – near the current site of the Hippodrome de Montréal. Opponents fear such a facility would exacerbate social problems associated with VLTs, which are highly addictive. They say a casino has no place on or near the site. The city expects the provincially owned land – a sprawling piece of prime real estate on the métro network and near the Décarie Expressway and Highway 40 – to be used for housing. Currently, the Hippodrome (formerly known as Blue Bonnets) houses 200 VLTs and offers off-track betting. Under a restructuring plan to be presented in Quebec Superior Court on Monday, racetrack operator Attractions Hippiques wants to permanently remove horse racing from the site. The company, which is in creditor protection, would then build a new gambling venue offering 300 VLTs and off-track betting. It would be built “near the current Hippodrome,” according to the restructuring plan. It is unclear who would pay the bill but Alain Vallières, head of a horse breeders’ group known by the acronym SPECSQ, said his sources say the new facility would cost about $17 million. His group opposes the proposal because it does not include plans for a replacement racetrack in the Montreal area. Attractions Hippiques’ plan for a “private casino” on the Hippodrome site is unacceptable, especially since Côte des Neiges is in desperate need of housing, said Denyse Lacelle, co-ordinator of the Côte des Neiges Community Council, a coalition of 45 local groups. The site should be used for new residential development, including affordable housing, with an adjacent industrial sector expanded onto the site to help create jobs, she said. “With its location minutes from downtown and its massive size – the size of all of Old Montreal – it should be used for housing, not for VLTs,” she said. “If people want another casino in addition to the Casino de Montréal, the farther from residential areas the better.” She said Côte des Neiges, where 40 per cent of residents live in poverty, is no place for a casino. It could cause more financial misery, she explained. The community council, which plans to picket Monday’s court hearing, will press politicians to stop the proposal. The Quebec government, which owns the land on which the Hippodrome is located, would have to okay the company’s plan. Marvin Rotrand, city councillor for the area, said the city has not been consulted on the issue and would “ferociously oppose” plans for gambling on – or near – the Hippodrome site. “Whether it’s 300 poker machines or 2,000, we don’t want any casino” and the social problems it would cause, he said. As for the Hippodrome, “we want it redeveloped mostly for housing. It’s a hedge against urban sprawl – a way to let young families stay in the city.” Between 5,000 and 7,000 units could be built there, he said. Last year, a Quebec public health department study concluded that one out of four people who gamble on both VLTs and horse racing risk developing a serious addiction. Gambling critics describe VLTs as the crack cocaine of gambling, saying they lead to financial ruin for some addicts and suicide for others. Alain Dubois, a spokesperson for Emjeu, a citizens coalition for responsible gambling, said he fears a new facility at the Hippodrome would feature new types of VLTs that are aimed at a new audience: young people. The new VLTs are more interactive and challenging but are just as addictive, Dubois said. “No matter what type of VLT is installed, it’s a worrying proposal,” he said. “Adding machines there in a new building that has the allure of a casino in such a central location could attract many new players,” and leave more Quebecers addicted. ariga@thegazette.canwest.com © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette -
Job picture may be worse than it looks Many losses were full-time positions. Weakness in U.S. saps Canada as unemployment rate rises to 6.6% By SHEILA MCGOVERN, The Gazette; Reuters contributed to this report January 10, 2009 Canada's unemployment rate shot up more than expected in December, but avoided the carnage witnessed in the U.S. where the jobless rate is now the highest in 16 years. Still, Canadian economists aren't heaving a sigh of relief. The country is definitely in recession, there's more bad news ahead and it would be naive to think Canada won't feel repercussions from the bloodbath to the south, said Carlos Leitao, chief economist at Laurentian Bank Securities. And that includes Quebec, he quickly added. "This week, we've seen articles here and there stating somehow Quebec was on some other planet, able to ride out this storm. Well, not. We are on the same planet as everyone else." And the dreadful situation in the U.S. will sap Canada's manufacturing sector, based in Quebec and Ontario, he said. Canada lost 34,400 jobs in December, driving the unemployment rate to 6.6 per cent from 6.3 per cent, fuelled by losses in construction. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says housing starts slid 11.8 per cent in November, the third double-digit decrease in four months. Quebec saw its unemployment rate rise to 7.3 per cent from 7.1 per cent, because of losses in construction, trade and the tourism industry. And the figures are actually more troubling than they appear, Leitao said. There were major losses in full-time jobs, he said, which were partly offset by gains in part-time work. "That's not exactly a recipe for great prosperity. We have weak job creation and the quality is less than a year ago." And it isn't about to get better, said Krishen Rangasamy of CIBC World Markets. "With forthcoming plant closures and layoffs already announced, it's clear the worst is yet to come on the employment front, with the unemployment rate likely to creep up steadily toward eight per cent." However, economists said we can take some solace: for a rare moment, our unemployment rate is less than that of the U.S. Though the past two months have been tough here, employment in Canada at least grew between December 2007 and December 2008, albeit by a scant 0.6 per cent (an addition of 98,000 jobs, 100 of them in Quebec.) The U.S. has been losing all year and, in December, was hit with a massive drop of 524,000 jobs, driven by layoffs in all major sectors except government, education and health. That pushed its unemployment rate to 7.2 per cent from 6.8 per cent in November, higher than the seven per cent analysts were forecasting and a peak not seen since January 1993. Total job loses for 2008 reached 2.6 million, the largest decline since a 2.75-million drop in 1945. "The job situation is ugly and is going to get uglier. There's no reason to expect hiring anytime in the next three to six months. We are not going to see any hiring until the government steps in and acts. Talk doesn't work," said Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research in New York. The collapse of the U.S. housing market and the resulting financial crisis have triggered the worst financial environment since the Great Depression, and businesses and consumers have both retrenched. The darkening labour market picture underscored the sense of urgency President-elect Barack Obama and lawmakers feel about enacting a huge economic stimulus plan. "Clearly the situation is dire. It is deteriorating and it demands urgent and immediate action," Obama told a news conference yesterday. "This morning, we received a stark reminder about how urgently action is needed." smcgovern@ thegazette.canwest.com
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article de bloomberg -
No housing crash in Canada "In most eastern cities, builders continued to enjoy modest price gains." JAY BRYAN, The Gazette Published: 9 hours ago The latest data out of Canada's housing market demonstrate two things clearly: it's going through a significant slowdown, but, just as important, it's not following the U.S. market down the drain. The number of new homes started by Canadian builders in October was down, but only by three per cent, much less than expected by forecasters. So far this year, notes economist Paul Ferley at the Royal Bank, average monthly starts are down by less than five per cent compared with the plunge of 30 per cent seen in the U.S. Still, housing starts in Canada have been drifting down since they peaked at an annual rate of 277,000 two and a half years ago. The rate in October was 212,000. Market analysts believe that pent-up demand for homes has been increasingly satisfied over the past few years. As well, rising prices squeezed affordability for those looking for a first home. Now most analysts believe the construction decline will accelerate in the coming year, as a slowing economy puts more pressure on would-be buyers. Nevertheless, new-home prices as of September (these numbers take longer to compile), were holding up well, reflecting the same resilient demand that has kept home construction busy. A survey by Statistics Canada finds that average new-home prices across Canada were up by 2.1 per cent in September from a year earlier, although there's a lot of variation among major cities. The sharpest price changes were in cities with resource-based economies. In St. John's and Regina, where local booms have yet to peter out, prices were up by 23 per cent. But in Alberta, where an oilsands investment frenzy has cooled recently, gains have ended. In Calgary, the average new home price was down by one per cent. In Edmonton, it fell by six per cent. And after having soared higher than anywhere else in Canada, prices stalled in Vancouver (up 1.4 per cent) and Victoria (no change). In most eastern cities, builders continued to enjoy modest price gains, with the average new home up by 4.8 per cent in Montreal, three per cent in Toronto, 6.1 per cent in Quebec City and 4.3 per cent in Ottawa-Gatineau. There was a similar regional divide in housing starts, with British Columbia and Alberta down sharply from a year ago, while Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Ontario are up. As a slowing economy squeezes prices, it's likely to be the highest-priced markets that will show the most substantial price losses, suggested Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at the Bank of Montreal. Canada's housing downturn is likely to be much milder than the one in the U.S. because it's fundamentally different, he said. The U.S. housing collapse stemmed from a home-price bubble whose collapse is taking down the whole economy, but the key influence on Canada's generally healthy market is merely the predictable drag from a North American recession. However, a few cities in Canada witnessed such big price gains that they're likely to sell off sharply, Porter said. When the latest resale prices for existing homes come out late this week, he expects to see continued drops in Canada's highest-priced cities: Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. In Quebec and Atlantic Canada, existing home prices have continued rising and should continue to hold up relatively well, he predicted, because their more modest growth remained tied to fundamentals like average incomes. As of September, the average Montreal resale price was up by 4.4 per cent from a year earlier, while Halifax was ahead 10 per cent. By contrast, Toronto was down three per cent, Calgary was off six per cent and Vancouver had lost eight per cent. jbryan@thegazette.canwest.com
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Resale housing market drops 2% in Montreal The Gazette; Reuters Published: 4 hours ago Montreal's resale housing market declined two per cent in 2008, the Greater Montreal Real Estate Board said yesterday. For the first nine months of the year, 8,463 properties changed hands in the Montreal region. Property listings increased 12 per cent compared with the same period a year ago. The average selling price increase was five per cent this past quarter, vs. four per cent in the second quarter and six per cent in the first quarter. "Despite the rise in listings observed over the last two quarters, the high demand is such that the resale market remains favourable to sellers," Michel Beausejour, the board's CEO, said
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New housing plan unveiled The Gazette Published: 9 hours ago A plan by the Metropolitan Montreal Community that would cost $500 million over the next five years to build, renovate and repair 10,000 low-income and social housing units in the greater Montreal area was unveiled yesterday. The agency co-ordinates urban and regional planning for 82 municipalities in and around the island of Montreal. Paul Larocque, who heads the CMM's housing commission, announced the five-year plan that would see 20,000 units built across Quebec. The greatest need, however, is on the island of Montreal, where the occupancy rate of existing social and low-cost housing units is 100 per cent. "The challenge is enormous," said Michael Prescott, Montreal city council executive committee member. "We need the co-operation of all levels of government to assure stable financing if we are to realize our objectives by 2013." Most of the funding is already secure. The Quebec government has set aside $26 million a year under the five-year Accès Logis program to build new housing units and has earmarked another $96 million a year until 2013 to renovate and repair existing housing units under another infrastructure program, Habitations à loyer modique. It appears the federal government is on board. On Sept. 4, the Harper government allocated $1.9 billion to extend programs to combat homelessness in Canada, including in Montreal, but in the middle of an election campaign, it hasn't bothered to tell anyone. "We are well on our way to meeting our needs," said James McGregor, a vice-president with the Société d'habitation du Québec, the principal government agency responsible for affordable housing in Quebec. "But we only found out about the federal government's participation through the CMHC website. It's a very curious thing." No one from the department of Human Resources and Social Development was available to comment yesterday.
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Harper disagrees with pessimistic report on Canadian housing market
un sujet a posté etienne dans L'actualité
Harper disagrees with pessimistic report on Canadian housing market Wed Sep 24, 1:46 PM Conservative Leader Stephen Harper says he disagrees with a report by brokerage firm Merrill Lynch that warns Canada could be headed for a housing and mortgage meltdown similar to the one that has devastated the United States economy. The report, issued Wednesday by Merrill Lynch Canada economists David Wolf and Carolyn Kwan, said many Canadian households are more financially overextended than their counterparts in the U.S. or Britain. They said it's only a matter of time before the "tipping point" is reached and the housing and credit markets crack in Canada. "I don't accept that conclusion, not at all," Harper told reporters on tour in British Columbia. "We have seen the housing market and the construction market much stronger in Canada than in the U.S.," he said. Harper said Canadian financial institutions have also taken a different approach to lending than their American counterparts. "We don't have the same situation here with the mortgages as was the case in the U.S. with the subprime mortgages there," he said. "So, therefore, I think that our market is in a much stronger position." The report acknowledges that the analysis is more pessimistic than the prevailing view. Many economists have been saying that Canada's housing and banking sectors are much more stable than their American counterparts, and will likely slow down but not crash. But Merrill Lynch Canada - whose U.S. parent is one of the biggest victims of a crisis in financial markets arising from the American housing and mortgage meltdown - said Canadians should be wary. Household net borrowing in Canada amounted to 6.3 per cent of disposable income in 2007, which is more than households in the U.K. and not far off the peak reached by U.S. households in 2005. The report also said housing prices are now falling and inventories of unsold homes are rising sharply in Canada, suggesting that this market turnaround will not be a transitory phenomenon. However, the prevailing view is that Canada's lenders have issued few of the type of subprime mortgages that sparked the U.S. crisis. In addition, a recent study showed that Canadian residential properties are not overvalued in most cities. With files from the Canadian Press lien -
1,000 new homes for poor in Montreal The Gazette Published: 1 hour ago Quebec announced yesterday it will build 1,000 new social housing units in Montreal, part of a $132-million investment for 2,000 units in Quebec announced in the 2008-2009 budget. "For the past five years, our government has increased its actions to improve conditions for those who are less fortunate in Quebec," said Nathalie Normandeau, minister of municipal affairs. Affordable housing is in high demand in Montreal, with only a 1.4-per-cent vacancy rate in 2007 for units with at least three bedrooms that rent for less than $700 per month.
