HawthorneVillager.com

All you have to do is a case by case comparison. With Mattamy homes its easy. How much was your house April 2010 vs April 2011. But I think this is more of an overall summary of the sales in Milton. My house has gone up more than 5% in the past year though to answer your question.

228 sparkly diamonds available for purchase in 2010
178 sparkly diamonds available for purchase in 2011

2010 - $3,924.66 average price for a sparkly diamond sold
2011 - $4,114.59 average price for a sparkly diamond sold

2011, there was more women getting engaged than there were diamonds to put on their fingers -- oh oh.. we have a supply issue! Guess that means we can sell what we have for more money. Unfortunately, we can't really jack the prices through the roof because there is a point where the brides to be (or their fiances) won't pay -- no matter how special their little lady is... so unfortunately business suffers. You see, our revenue is down because we have *SUPPLY ISSUES*, not because there is a lack of buyers -- because you see, if we had a lack of buyers, we would have to *GIVE AWAY* the diamonds rather than charge 5% more than we did last year.

Your numbers are meaningless and simply point to what ever major economist is saying -- there isn't an oversupply of homes and there is still significant demand which is keeping prices elevated.

Supply vs. Demand.

A housing bubble bursting/crisis/issue would look like this:

228 sales in 2010
178 sales in 2011

2010 - $392,466 average price
2011 - $371,459 average price

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most would fully understand logic dtc, it is very basic! Dr. Economist will not understand.

Love the graphs!

Again, I'm sorry, I don't see your logic. You are talking as if real estate is a store with one owner where there it's about "total income/profit". It doesn't work that way. Real Estate is a commodity, like oil, oranges or diamonds. The "real estate market" is like a flea market, where many people can go and sell their commodities. If there are 10 people looking for diamonds at the flea market and there are only 7 to be purchased, those diamond sellers will keep raising their prices until they sell the 7 for the most they could get for them. The other 3 buyers will leave without anything. If there were 7 diamonds available and only 3 buyers, the diamond sellers would need to drop their prices (or risk not selling) because the buyers would have the upper hand.

Anyways, here is the April stats:
http://www.torontorealestateboard.com/c ... mw1104.pdf

I know you "hate the evil real estate industry" so don't bother reading the text. Just look at the charts that show "days on market"

You will see they are at April 2010 levels. When the average days on the market is under 20, there is a lack of supply. That means there is likely multiple offers on houses, at or over asking price.

In the end, I don't care how the "total real estate market" is "maximizing profits" nor do anyone else on this forum. They care that if the sold the house they bought last April (when you claimed we were peaking), this April, they would see a 5-10% price increase and it would likely sit on the market less than 20 days. Sounds like a healthy real estate market to me.

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Its really scary to see someone take out a HELOC to finance their porn habit.

I'm not going to lie, I skipped the middle part of this conversation, but after reading the first page I thought another point of view would be helpful.
Check out:
http://www.donrcampbell.com/the-latest- ... eal-estate

And make sure to read some of his other blogs. Research is what he does for a living so he is sure to catch any little change, and as you will notice, he reports all the facts.

Hope it helps.

~Lisa.

Location, Location, Location throws "normals" out the window. GTA has a serious lack of serviceable land and you will see less and less new home builders starting new projects within the GTA.



http://www.moneyville.ca/article/977288 ... ales-slide

http://oneillrealestate.ca/2011/04/22/n ... 5-realnet/

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/report-on- ... ice=mobile

http://ohba.ca/pdfs/tools.pdf

And yes, Canada is doing fantastic. I am working for a 'Food Company' and we are seeing record year over year organic growth unprecedented -- exceeding expectations even with rising commodity costs. Ford, GM, and Chrysler are also reporting the same. As well as the forestry industry. I think Ford had one of the best years in 50 some odd years.

Anyways, the nay sayers will say "real estate only works at 3:1" and that within a few years you will be able to buy a 2,000 sq/ft house in downtown Toronto for under $300,000.

I personally think there is more and more competition looking for houses in the GTA and it will keep prices elevated.

No mater how many posts were made above, nobody can explain why prices are still going up when they claim sales are terrible. In no other area do people still get high prices (or increasing prices) for things that aren't in demand. During the economic crisis look at what happened to the price of cars? I bought my brand new Ford for 0% interest and about $6k less than it was a year earlier. Add that to "free this" and "free that". It was a give away.

I agree fully that you only see great big double digit gains in the new and upcoming areas and once an area becomes more stable and growth decreases, prices will level off at a normal rate.. but to say the GTA is primed for a major crash in the next 1-3 years based on the current economic situation is crazy.

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One other thing people don't take into consideration is the cost of building materials.

Go to your insurance companies website and do the "cost to rebuild my home" calculations and you will see that a 2,000 sq/ft detached, 2 story home with 2 car garage has a "cost to rebuild" of $349,000 -- without land costs.

How do you expect to get that same house for 250k?

To think that the actual cost of lumber, bricks, shingles, oil etc. never mind labor costs is somehow sitting at the same cost it was 10 years ago is just as crazy. Building costs are also not going up at the same 2% as most other costs -- we are in competition with other countries for materials as some countries like China & India are experiencing record building/growth.

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The relevance is that it costs a certain amount to build a house in a certain area. It's a combination of labor costs, materials, and resources required to construct a house. If you weren't a builder (the insurance thing), it would cost you $349,000 to build a average detached 2,000 sq/ft house. This doesn't include land costs and presumes you own the lot. Sure, builders don't pay that because they gain efficiencies in mass production, scheduling, and bulk buying of materials, so they have a better return.

Most builders make approximately 10% return per house. If the house sells for $350,000, they make $35,000 profit after the land is paid for, all the taxes, all the levies, all the roads, all the sewers and the cost of the house built on it including labor and materials. This is for your cookie cutter mass subdivision builder (not the luxury or custom home builder who have a much higher return)

In the states there is an index for measuring the costs related to building homes. While some things have actually decreased in price, most are up and up large year over year.

My very point is that 10 years ago a builder could easily make a profit on a 2,000 sq/ft house for $299k in Milton, now it wouldn't even cover most of their costs -- so yes, prices have to rise after 10 years. They can't ever go back down to those prices unless we have a major supply issue like in the states where houses are selling BELOW actual value (not just inflated value, they are selling for less than it costs to build).

And yes, they are still building in the states -- but it's location, location, location. Nobody is building 2,000 unit subdivisions in Detroit.

http://romaclumber.com/news/whole-house ... pril-2011/

^^ This is very dependant on physical location but it does show you, all the materials to buy a house are also commodities and as such go up and down like anything else.

Japan, China, India = more demand for commodities.

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You keep harping on those figures; you do realize 2010 spiked most sales numbers as many buyers rushed in to snap up houses early in the year before the dreaded HST took effect?

It's not that 2011 is so slow, it is that the previous year was artificially high. Revenue figures are also effected by the aforementioned HST.

Milton is still ranked as one of the fastest growing markets and there is still a huge demand for homes here (one only needs to see a hundred people line up in the rain to hopefully get a premium lot to figure that out).