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June 2015 Ontario Economic Fundamentals

Ally

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News articles for June 2015.
 

Ally

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With the shift of the Camaro to Michigan, GM's Oshawa plant to lose 1,000 jobs; Are you adjusting your portfolio? Will this be balanced off by increase in demand due to extension of highway 407?

Employment at the General Motors of Canada Ltd. assembly plants in Oshawa, Ont., will drop by 1,000 people to 2,600 in November when production of the Chevrolet Camaro shifts to Michigan.

More than two years after announcing that Camaro production would move from Oshawa to Michigan, GM Canada said the last Canadian-built version of the car will roll off the assembly line on Nov. 20.

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Condominium Act of Ontario update will create training and licensing authority for property managers

The 1.3 million Ontario residents who live in condominiums will get a new, less expensive way to resolve disputes under proposed legislation to be introduced Wednesday.


The province will create a Condominium Authority to provide a range of services including dispute resolution, so condo owners won’t have to go to court to clear up a disagreement with a neighbour or their condo board.

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Greater Toronto REALTORS(R) report monthly housing resale market figures

TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 06/03/15 -- Toronto Real Estate Board President Paul Etherington announced 11,706 sales reported by Greater Toronto REALTORS® in May 2015. This result was up by 6.3 per cent in comparison to 11,013 sales reported in May 2014. For the TREB market area as a whole, sales were up for all major housing types. However, in the City of Toronto, where the supply of low-rise listings has been constrained, sales were down for detached homes.

"During my tenure as TREB President over the past year, it is clear to me that ownership housing remains top of mind as a quality long-term investment for GTA households. This is why, despite a shortage of listings in some market segments, we experienced a record number of sales reported through TREB's MLS® System for the month of May," said Mr. Etherington.

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A hot housing market and the changing role of the real estate agent

TORONTO — The Internet and social media have made it easier than ever to shop for and sell a home, forcing real estate agents to offer more services in order to stay relevant.

Realtors once served as gatekeepers of data, providing customers with access to exclusive information that helped them price their homes or determine the true value of the properties they were eyeing.

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Hamilton/Burlington economies intertwined

Is there a new power couple in the making?

Hamilton, once named Ontario's best city to invest in real estate, and Burlington, the country's best mid-sized city in which to live, talked about their shared futures at a daylong summit of community leaders Tuesday.

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Toronto housing market matches Vancouver strength as detached home prices soar to $1.1 million a day

The country’s two largest housing markets also remain its hottest.

Toronto’s existing housing market shows no signs of a slowdown in price growth but a shortage of supply is having an impact on overall sales numbers.

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Hamilton announces route for fully funded LRT. Time to get cracking investors. Discover where the stations will be, find out what neighbourhoods will be within the 800 Meter rule and will cash flow today. Then you know what to do!

First of all, it's worth noting that this is a very politically smart plan.

Some plans seem designed to alienate and divide communities, but the rapid transit funding announcement was clearly calculated to maximize the overall benefits of LRT while at the same time serving a wide array of direct interests.

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Hamilton gets YES for an answer

Council attendees included Mayor Fred Eisenberger, and Councillors Jason Farr, Lloyd Ferguson, Matt Green, Aidan Johnson and Terry Whitehead. City Manager Chris Murray and former mayors Larry Di Ianni and Bob Bratina were also in the audience.

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Curious about the Toronto Gardiner Expressway revamp debate. Here's an interesting read

I’ve always appreciated many aspects of the Gardiner Expressway. It offers one of the most breathtaking views of Toronto’s skyline. The experience of travelling through the city’s core suspended amidst a canyon of shimmering glass towers never fails to excite me. It is a truly awe-inspiring vantage point from which to view our remarkable progress. And, of course, there’s the undeniable convenience of being able to drive down the DVP and have a continuous connection to the Gardiner, QEW and beyond. As a car driver, I like it.


When the Gardiner East debate began again this term, I was leaning toward the “hybrid” option. I agree with hybrid proponents that this is not the same fight as the Spadina Expressway battle led by my friend and mentor, former Mayor David Crombie. No existing neighbourhoods will be bulldozed. No stable communities will be severed. The options being presented to Council are either keeping the status quo with some ramps moved (the hybrid option), or removing an existing piece of infrastructure. Choosing the latter felt wrong.

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Condos revitalize hotspot's commercial markets

Kitchener's downtown commercial market is well on its way to keeping up with the city’s residential boom, with condo projects acting as catalysts for the core’s resurgence.

"There are three condo developments that will put thousands of people directly in the downtown core which will bring businesses back to the core and create opportunities for landlords and investors," said Karl Innanen, managing director at Colliers International.

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The towns and cities REIN has identified as Top performers in the coming decade are already outperforming expectations. Kitchener, Barrie, Hamilton all coming into their own. Congratulations REIN Members for following the research!

Toronto residents Stephen and Melissa Heidebrecht have done the math and they’re moving on – to Kitchener.

After two years of scouring Realtor.ca, squeezing through open-house crowds and watching homes they’d love to live in go for $100,000 or more over the asking price, they’ve thrown in the towel on Toronto.

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Toronto condo development being outpaced by the Big Apple

The fact that Toronto has been the North American leader in residential condo development has been trumpeted loudly and proudly for a long time. It’s even been a part of election campaigns and public relations campaigns. But it might finally be over. According to a popular Toronto real estate site, the city has slid into second place on the real estate leader board with New York City now officially developing more multi-family housing units than Toronto.

Up until now, Toronto had held the top spot for residential developments, with 38,114 multi-family units currently underway. However, it still doesn’t beat New York’s 38,815. It may not seem like much of a difference, but it proves a good point.

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Phantom real estate bids are enough of a problem that Ontario is cracking down

Starting July 1, the Real Estate Council of Ontario will be enforcing new rules that place strict criteria on what constitutes a bid on a residential property.

The goal is to crack down on the elusive phantom bid, which some homebuyers suspect occur in bidding wars, but are unable to prove.

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Where to Buy now 2015: twelve Toronto neighbourhoods for buyers of all budgets

Anyone considering a home purchase in Toronto knows the feeling: the panicky vertigo that sets in whenever prices hit a new high. But you can still get some serious bang for your budget in this city. Sufferers of real estate anxiety: here is your Xanax

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City of Barrie updated rental bylaws

Two-Unit Houses
A two-unit house is one that contains two separate dwelling units. Commonly, a two-unit house starts as a single dwelling unit (detached, semi-detached or townhouse) with a second dwelling unit later created (sometimes referred to as a second suite, in-law suite, or basement apartment). Duplexes and semi-detached units located on the same property are also considered as two-unit houses.

View the web page here.
 

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Gardiner debate takes council in weird directions

If you want a measure of how democracy in Toronto works, or doesn’t, consider the case of how Jim Karygiannis (open Jim Karygiannis's policard)’ tunnel dreams came to dominate the city council debate on Wednesday. The assembled representatives of the city were there to consider two well-studied options before them, to remove the Gardiner east of Jarvis Street (“remove”) or to rebuild that portion to the Don Valley Parkway (“hybrid”).

But Councillor Karygiannis had a different idea, one I think it’s fair to say was legitimately favoured by no one except him. He wants to spend four or five times more money to tunnel the two-kilometre road, or possibly to bury the entire Gardiner east of Exhibition Place. No matter that such a project might take 20 or 30 years to build and the existing road will crumble in place in the meantime. No matter that the cost would be absurd. No matter that tunnelling had been investigated and dismissed already by the city’s staff.


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Phantom real estate bids targeted by Ontario law

Starting next month, homebuyers in Ontario will have new protections against phantom bids, a practice used by unscrupulous real estate agents to drive up the prices of homes.

Agents may hint they have received competing offers when they haven’t in order to spook potential buyers into raising their offers or rushing into a deal.


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No condo glut in Toronto when you study the data, says Urbanation

The data reported by CMHC showed that the stock of unabsorbed condos jumped by 816 units, or 41%, in one month! If this were true, the number of new units belonging to no one but the developer who built them would be at an all-time high -- even higher than during the crash of the early 90s when buyers were walking away from their units and projects pre-sold far fewer units than they do today.

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You know you have priced yourself out of growth when auto manufacturing continues to boom... Just not in our country. Check this job growth

Mexico is the auto industry darling, Canada is struggling to retain a manufacturing footprint, and the U.S. is a house divided with most of the new automotive investment and jobs headed south of the Mason-Dixon line.

The three countries are a united trading block under the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, but they're fierce rivals in the boardrooms where auto executives decide where to invest in the latest equipment and additional jobs.

Read the full article here.
 
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