More than one third of Toronto’s condos are owned by investors, new StatCan report finds

More than one third of Toronto’s condos are owned by investors, new StatCan report finds

‘Toronto is heading in the direction of global cities like New York City — Manhattan especially — London, and Shanghai, where they have up to 80 per cent of their condo market taken by investors,’ one expert says.

5 min.Fire officials said nobody was in the bus.Toronto police say it was called to Danforth and Woodbine avenues just before 4 a.Scroll Right Article content American Sun Belt cities and those with new arenas have been getting preference in the past several years.

read A whopping 36 per cent of the condos in Toronto are owned by investors, according to a new report published by Statistics Canada via the Canadian Housing Statistics Program.In some smaller markets, investors account for well over 80 per cent of condo ownership, and across Ontario overall, almost 42 per cent are owned by investors.Toronto fire said its members were checking nearby homes for gas leaks and were waiting on Toronto Hydro and Enbridge Gas to determine if the sinkhole was related to a gas leak or watermain break.The report defines an investor as someone who owns at least one residential property that is not used as their primary place of residence.Police say the driver took off after the collision.The data is pulled from early 2020, before the pandemic feeding frenzy hit and prices shot up by more than 50 per cent across the country as interest rates reached historic lows.Investors own about half of the condos built from 2016 through early 2020, said the report, which sheds some light on the long-standing question about the impact of investors in Canada’s largest housing market., after NHL commissioner Gary Bettman’s formal announcement.

“Toronto is heading in the direction of global cities like New York City, Manhattan especially, London, and Shanghai, where they have up to 80 per cent of their condo market taken by investors,” said Simeon Papailias, managing partner of Royal LePage’s REC Canada.Police are asking anyone with information to contact them.“We’ll end up in the exact same place where downtown Toronto is a commercial commodity that is rented out.” The report shows that condos are more popular with investors than houses.In Ontario, investors account for 20 per cent of all property owners — less than half the amount for condos.SHARE:.That’s because condos are cheaper and the deal structure is more flexible, said Papailias.It’s going to be colder, but nothing a good (winter) coat can’t solve.

Pre-construction condos allow investors to be flexible with the deposit amount — it can be 10 per cent right away or five per cent over the construction period — making it a more accessible real estate option than a detached home, he said.Pre-pandemic, few investors were international buyers.Many were purchasing real estate as a retirement investment or a way to help their children get a foothold on the property ladder.In Toronto, the downtown core had the highest concentration of investors and more than 112,000 condos were investor-owned compared to 53,000 houses.But some smaller municipalities trump Toronto’s condo investor numbers.” The format for now will remain a mini-tournament of teams representing the four divisions and the skills contest a mix of traditional challenges such as hardest shot, fastest skater and target shooting.

In the Woodstock area, the share of investor-owned condos was 95 per cent, in Sarnia it was almost 87 per cent, and London was more than 86 per cent, according to the report.While smaller city condos are more affordable for investors compared to Toronto prices, student housing also plays a significant factor in investor interest, said Ron Butler, mortgage broker of Butler Mortgages.“For many university cities like London, when condos are built they’re advertised as being ideal for students, so investors snatch them up because it’s a great rental opportunity,” he said.In places like Sarnia or Windsor, people are leaving the GTA to find more affordable housing, especially those on welfare or disability benefits, who need to pay the lowest possible rent but want to remain in southern Ontario, Butler said.There was also a higher rate of business-owned investment properties among the condo stock than the housing stock in Ontario.That was a fund-raiser for Leafs defenceman Ace Bailey following his career-ending head injury.

Businesses owned 13.4 per cent of condos for investment purposes — the highest share among the provinces, according to the report.Businesses and corporations that own condos fall into two primary categories, said John Pasalis, head of real estate brokerage Realosophy.There are individual investors who have a business and therefore capital in their corporation.“These business buyers are buying through their business name rather than their individual name for various tax reasons and advantages,” he said.There is usually an alumni component to the weekend, as well.

“These are typically mom and pop individual investors.” The second type of investors are big institutional investors, where companies raise millions of dollars to buy a block of condos to rent them out.“We don’t know the distribution of these two types of business investors and how it splits up,” Pasalis said.“But it’s likely more common in Ontario because it’s where the financial hub of the country is.” As of July 2022, multi-property owners that are corporations account for ownership of just under four per cent of residential properties in Ontario, according to land and commercial registry company Teranet.

However, the report does not address what is a growing concern in the market — the number of investors who are over-leveraged and the investors who overextended themselves in the pandemic when interest rates were at all-time lows