The Toronto Star published an article this past Sunday (August 8) which had some eye-popping opening paragraphs, worth quoting in full: And 1995 is roughly the year that Torontonians would have had to apply for subsidized housing for a chance to secure any one-bedroom units that became vacant in 2021 at 133 Broadway Avenue, a 52-unit Toronto Community Housing lowrise… Read more »
Regular readers will recall that in September I wrote a post about taxing vacant homes in St Catharines in which I discussed a number of reasons why it wasn’t a good idea and wasn’t practical. I wrote that post in response to a local newspaper article which reported on suggestions made by a local councillor. This past Sunday (November 10th)… Read more »
In my two previous posts on the topic of non-purpose-built or unofficial rentals I showed that in the ten largest cities in southern Ontario the number of non-purpose-built rentals can be quite large, often thousands of dwellings, and I discussed the different types of non-purpose-built rentals and why it’s important they are included in market surveys. In my first post,… Read more »
Several months back I was having lunch with a friend in the industry and we were talking about the small number of rentals constructed in Toronto every year despite huge demand for new, condo-equivalent rentals in the city. We agreed that we didn’t really expect anything to change, since developers prefer to build and sell condos, while the few developers… Read more »
Over the last year or so I’ve come across articles discussing if new rentals entering a housing market suppress rents and cause them to flatten or decrease, in sort of a supply versus demand relationship. Some articles claim to have found that rents overall increase with supply growth while other articles claim to have found that rents decrease with supply… Read more »
In my first post in this series I examined the size of the non-purpose-built or unofficial rental supply in Ontario’s ten largest cities. In this post I discuss the three main types of non-purpose-built rentals, comment on their importance, and explain why knowing all of this is important. The non-purpose-built rental supply can be separated into the following three categories:… Read more »
In my first post on this website I explained how the housing market breaks down, identifying the categories of housing into which it can be separated. Readers should go back and read that post. In it I described the difference between purpose-built and non-purpose-built rentals, what I tend to refer casually as “official” and “unofficial” rentals—or de jure and de… Read more »
Before digging deeply into rental housing, I want to make sure readers understand how the housing supply breaks down. First, the Census (conducted by Statistics Canada every five years) counts the total number of “occupied private dwellings”, which are all dwellings of any kind being occupied by households. In the Census, one dwelling is occupied by one household, and dwellings… Read more »