When you think of real estate development in small towns, what do you imagine? For most investors, large land parcels with massive master-planned communities are the first thing to come to mind. Proportionately, this type of development is responsible for bringing a lot of units to market in the past few market cycles. It may not be especially well-suited to meet the changing demands we've seen in the Greater Toronto Area as a result of the "urban exodus" phenomena I wrote about... [read more]

[read more]

I feel like I've been generally about as exhaustive as I can be about the impact/existence of the "urban exodus" in the GTA, but you can expect a little bit more data in the future. The team at informedrealtor.com is putting together a visual timeline video. BlogTO & Zoocasa posted a great map detailing price growth across the GTA that echoed my original exodus mapping project. From my perspective, price is the more important metric than individual or household... [read more]

[read more]

I've been pretty inspired lately by some folks on twitter who I admire for their scientific approach to real estate. Almost all of them have started looking at data for their markets on a weekly basis, rather than a monthly basis. The objective of this is to figure out what's happening to the real estate market more accurately, so we can be anticipatory, rather than reactionary in our behavior towards the market. I've decided to follow suit and start reporting weekly data on... [read more]