Week 172: Toronto’s Mayoral Madness: Breaking Down Real Estate Rhetoric

I’ve been quite heavily focused on the election coming up here in Toronto. We’ll have a new mayor soon, and I’m not excited about any perceived front runners.

Are you?

Now, I’m not one to get too wound up at the slight mention of increasing taxes because I think that makes sense in some scenarios.

So many people are jumping down Olivia Chow‘s throat for saying things like she’s going to increase property taxes and the vacant property tax from 1 to 3%. I don’t think criticizing her for that is warranted because I don’t necessarily disagree with a portion of what she’s saying; however, I have a big problem with the ambiguous words that Olivia Chow was using.

In her platform on housing, she is too ambiguous for me, as are the other candidates, because it seems like many of them don’t understand how money flows and works in government.

I think that many of these candidates think they can just stroll on in there and start doing all of these things without really going through the process, approvals, red tape etc., to make any of it happen; sadly, that’s the problem with the government.

Olivia Chow & Anna Bilao

But Olivia Chow says things like “she’s going to increase the land transfer tax on luxury homes.“

but she doesn’t describe a price point and what she defines as luxury. There was mention of a $3mm starting point, but I’d like to see the focus on other taxes, not just LTT.

And I find that at this point, a lot of the talking points don’t have a lot of backbone, so looking at Ana Bilao, who has always been sort of on the side of advocating for affordable housing, etc., do you know if she has a plan to insure 20% of all new homes built by 2031 which equates to around 57,000 homes are purpose-built rentals.

So that’s awesome, but what does that do for affordability? This idea that we can outbuild demand is not based on any reality unless you stop making Toronto a place that people want to come to, which is not something that any level of government should be interested in doing.

I like the idea that she wants to freeze any proposals to demolish rental buildings, but why are we talking about affordability and market rate renting and purchasing?

The candidates should all be focused on housing the unhoused. What will you do to ensure that every homeless person has the care they need and a roof over their head?

A step in the right direction there, as Ana Bilao suggests, is to increase the rent bank that struggling renters can pull from; it currently sits at a $5 million fund. She’s proposing an increase to $15 million, so that’s definitely a step in the right direction to ensure people can continue paying rent and keep a safe roof over their heads.

Brad Bradford

Then we go to a candidate like Brad Bradford, who, aside from having one of the worst names in the history of all names, talks a lot about delivering what we call “missing middle” housing, which, in my opinion, the city of Toronto has done an amazing job of right now.

The new as-of-right regulations allow any residential lot that meets some fundamental criteria to build up to four units without all of the red tape that would normally be in place. The elimination of some of the costly development charges, so in my opinion, running on that platform is kind of useless, considering I personally was on a Technical advisory panel last summer with the urban land institute advising the city of Toronto to do this very thing so it’s already done.

So how is he going to incentivize homeowners further to build? So again, if you really dig deep, there’s no backbone or foundation to any of these comments.

I’m fairly certain that all of the candidates agree that unlocking government-owned lands and building a ton of housing makes a lot of sense. There, you can directly affect the subsidies and make sure that it’s affordable for people who cannot even afford geared-to-income housing because there is no income, for example.

Then Brad Bradford goes on to have this zero tolerance approach for homeless encampments, and the only real solution he’s offering there is to provide more funding for a shelter and supportive housing product projects, again, no real plan.

Anthony Furey

And then we have this Anthony Furey guy who, honestly, I’m super confused about how he ended up being one of the front runners because he doesn’t come across like he knows what he’s talking about.

He’s talking about a lot of nice things, like eliminating the municipal land transfer tax for first-time homebuyers and then phasing it out entirely because, in his words, “it’s an unreliable source of revenue. “

But at the same time, we’re talking about Toronto here like a bad market for us is an excellent market for other people, so I’m confused as to how he thinks those funds are going to be somehow recovered elsewhere.

He doesn’t seem to have a real plan for anything other than soundbites of wanting to deal with all of the existing development applications within six months but doesn’t really say how.

He wants to create a trusted landlord registry of some sort. A trusted tenant registry would be way more important, considering the amount of damage degenerate tenants cause by taking advantage of the system.

And again, his take on homelessness is pretty barbaric as well. Just removing all tent encampments and increased police presence and security patrols, but he is not really discussing how he plans on dealing with the real issue again. Not a real candidate, in my opinion.

Mitzi Hunter

Mitzi Hunter lays out a decent plan for increasing property taxes by around 6% or so, which wouldn’t cost the average homeowner an insane amount of money. I think it’s like a couple of hundred dollars per year more, and if you have a certain income level, you wouldn’t be affected, and seniors wouldn’t be affected, so that’s good.

The one thing I really don’t like about Mitzi Hunter is that she wants to create this new municipal organization called the Toronto affordable housing corporation.

The last thing that we need is another organization to suck up the money that can actually be used to help people, so I am immediately discounting her as a relevant candidate because of that giant waste of time, especially since organization like Create TO already exists many of the other candidates are, looking to lean on for help here.

Josh Matlow

Josh Matlow, honestly, I used to really like this guy, but then again, he doesn’t seem to really go beyond soundbites when it comes to what he’s saying. He wants to double land transfer tax for foreign and domestic buyers, but really we already have a foreign buyer ban in place for a couple of years, so I don’t know if it’s all that meaningful to talk about doubling taxes for people who can’t buy.

I don’t necessarily disagree with increasing the taxes for people buying secondary, tertiary, and beyond properties, so I kind of like that.

But again, he wants to create this whole new municipal organization called public build Toronto Using hundreds of millions of dollars that could be directed elsewhere or into existing organizations to help get things going a lot quicker.

He does have very specific numbers regarding how many rentals he wants to build and who they are for, but he doesn’t take a meaningful stand on homelessness or anything like that.

Mark Saunders

And I don’t really want to talk about Mark Saunders too much because, you know, I don’t believe that his heavy-handed approach to things is what the city needs talking about removing encampments, etc., but not really discussing how to specifically help people in need with increased funding to programming, etc.

I do like some of the stuff he’s saying about making it easier for certain not-for-profits to access funding to build affordable housing, so that’s good. Still, overall I don’t really think he has thought out a lot of these things and be able to get any of this stuff done in four years, you need to work with existing organizations to make things happen, and I don’t know if he’s got the experience to do it.

Chloe Brown

And I’m reserving my final words for my favourite candidate, whom very few people are talking about.

Her name is Chloe Brown, and her housing first policy is actually pretty good. She comes from a really good place and a place of realness, and I don’t think people are giving her enough credit, and when she speaks, it makes sense she doesn’t use soundbites.

She understands the problem and has a very specific plan to deal with it; she understands that it takes more than just providing a home to end homelessness; she sites really important case studies out of Finland, Utah, and New Jersey that have implemented these awesome housing first policies for decades in some cases that have reduced homelessness by up to 91%.

So I really think giving her a look and understanding what she’s all about would be very helpful.

How’s the Market?

So anyway, if you really want to look at the market numbers below, I’m just more focussed on the mayors this week and to help people understand who is available and what their stand for. Overall nothing too dramatic to report in the market inventory is relatively stable.

Condos are getting to a point where they might be a pretty good balance and provide buyers with a little more time to make their buying decisions.

We’re noticing a lot more houses sit on the market for a little bit longer than they’re used to, but this is the summer lull combined with decreased buyer sentiment after the interest rate announcement.

And on that note, I did eat a lot of shit from people about my call not to increase rates that day. Still, this article here from Benjamin Tal describing what an AI model would do in this scenario was quite refreshing to read because I think it was the wrong decision to increase rates based on one month’s numbers without looking at the big picture, but who am I?

I’m just a real estate agent here in Toronto, and you probably think I’m just trying to say everything’s OK so I can make a little bit more money to go on vacations, right? Anyway, I think this is long enough for today. I look forward to discussing this with you, and have a great week.

And if you’d like to book a call to discuss your specific real estate needs, you can do that here, and I really look forward to helping you.

Have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you next week. Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog so you get this in your inbox asap, and we’ll see you on Youtube!

(please subscribe to the YouTube Channel here, where I go over all of these reports in more detail)

Urban Markets: Downtown & Surrounding Areas
House Average Price: $1,778,825
House Median Price: $1,538,700
540 Active Listings
70 Firm Sales This Week
Months of Inventory (MoI) ~ 2.37(up from 2.04 last month)
Average Days on Market ~12.16

Condo Average Price: $857,674
Condo Median Price: $740,000
1833 Active Listings
117 Firm Sales This Week
MoI ~3.16  (up from  2.81 last month)
Average Days on Market (DOM) ~14.13

Urban North: Rosedale, Deer Park, Moore Park, Forest Hill, & Lawrence Park
House Average Price: $3,266,656
House Median Price: $3,070,000
149 Active Listings
16 Firm Sales This Week
MoI ~ 3.47(up from 3.11 last month)
Average Days on Market ~ 23

Condo Average Price: $1,056,288
Condo Median Price: $952,500
221 Active Listings
16 Firm Sales This Week
MoI ~ 3.99 (down from 4.05 last month)
Average Days on Market ~ 11

Leaside, Davisville, Yonge & Eglinton
House Average Price: $2,474,445
House Median Price: $2,380,000
9 Firm Sales This Week
MoI ~ 1.57  (up from 1.43)
Average Days on Market  10

Condo Average Price: $790,453
Condo Median Price: $690,000
136 Active Listings
13 Firm Sales This Week
MoI ~ 2.32 (down from 2.75 last mth)
Average Days on Market ~ 16

Birch Cliff
House Average Price: $1,219,500
House Median Price: $1,225,000
39 Active Listings
3 Firm Sales This Week
Months of Inventory (MoI) ~ 1.63 (down from 1.76)
Average Days on Market ~ 5

Kingston Rd Corridor to Highland Creek
House Average Price: $1,436,474
House Median Price: $1,200,000
87 Active Listings
19 Firm Sales This Week
Months of Inventory (MoI) ~ 2.14 (up from 1.71)
Average Days on Market ~ 14

Condo Average Price: $706,857
Condo Median Price: $748,000
48 Active Listings
7 Firm Sales This Week
MoI ~ 2.46 (down from 3.30)
Average Days on Market ~ 21.14

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