Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Assignment Survey Cancelled

Urbanation would like to formally announce the cancellation of our assignment survey.

We were disappointed that less than 15 of the 120 developers that we reached out to, ended up providing us data for this undertaking.

We certainly understand how busy most folks in the development industry are, and the time that would have been required to accumulate the information, we also recognize that many developers don't want to release any information that might come back to "bite them in the rear" so to speak. As noted in the previous blog posts, the individual project data was not to be released, just the cumulative results.

Urbanation has no doubt that rampant media coverage of "speculation" in the condominium market and the recent mortgage rule changes (brought on by the worry of condo flipping) have had a major dampening affect on new condominium sales in Q2-2012 and Q3-2012 (both dropping approximately 50% from their respective quarters in 2011) and the 40% decline quarterly in resale units priced above $400,000 in the third quarter.

Based on the responses we did get, the assignment activity was relatively low and there is very little "flipping" of registered units in the resale market, as the percent of units listed by projects during the first quarter post-registration is actually DECLINING in comparison to previous years (for subscribers, see Q2-2012 Condominium Market Survey). Investors are instead choosing to lease their suites in an extremely hot rental market (data from our UrbanRental report), which has seen demand hit recent market highs in Q3-2012:  80% lease-to-listings ratio and a very low 16 days-on-market in the Toronto CMA overall. In the investor heavy zones the results were better, Cityplace (89% LLR & 10 DOM), Downtown Core (84% LLR & 11 DOM), Harbourfront (82% & 12) and Downtown East (82% & 10).

We hope in the future should make a second attempt at this survey, that the development community will co-operate fully. Market information is extremely import, as key stakeholders are making decisions based on these results (or lack of results) that could detrimentally affect residential real estate developers.

2 comments:

  1. As the city of Toronto continues to grow, the demand for condominiums will continue to rise.

    Toronto Condominiums

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi!
    This article was very informative and worth reading. Thank you and keep posting.

    condo to rent in Toronto

    ReplyDelete