Kitchener, Cambridge, and Waterloo housing prices healthy in third quarter of 2015
Waterloo Region - The Royal LePage House Price Survey released yesterday showed healthy price growth across all housing types surveyed in Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge. During the third quarter of 2015, the aggregate price of a home in this region rose 5.9 per cent year-over-year to $346,333.
Over this period, the median price of condominiums saw a significant 14.0 per cent increase year-over-year to $234,026. The median price of bungalows appreciated 7.0 per cent to $333,131, while two-storey homes rose 5.1 per cent to $363,397.
How to make the Toronto-Waterloo corridor into a world-leading innovation centre. Jobs, economic stability
Recently, in this space, we made the case for building a Toronto-Waterloo Innovation Corridor as Canada’s best shot at a technology ecosystem of the scale and density to rival the world’s best.
The potential is transformative. In Britain, the Cambridge innovation cluster started from scratch in the 1960s with the goal to “put the brains of Cambridge University at the disposal of industry.” Today, Cambridge is Europe’s largest technology cluster, home to more than 1,500 technology-based firms, employing more than 54,000 skilled workers, generating nearly $20-billion in annual revenues, turning out world-leading research and intellectual property, and acting as a magnet for talent.
The number of brand new rental apartments under construction across the GTA has hit a 25-year high as the drive to live downtown remains strong and house prices continue to push home ownership further out of reach.
Some 6,523 purpose-built rental apartments — numbers not seen since the virtual collapse of rental construction in the 1990s — were under construction as of the third quarter of 2015, according to condo and rental market research firm Urbanation.
Residents suggest creating rental properties above small businesses will maximize the use of buildings, lead to renovation of downtown facilities and better engage residents better to help Orillia's downtown grow and thrive.
Those, among others, were some of the conclusions drawn from the Downtown Tomorrow Community Improvement Plan's first public information session held in July.
Time for the city to make way for laneway, advocates say
A tiny — but bold — housing experiment is getting set to launch in Toronto’s Trinity-Spadina neighbourhood, and it could help bring new life, and even green space, to some of the 250 kilometres of largely neglected and unsightly laneways across the city.
The University of Toronto has partnered with local residents and affordable housing advocates, and will create three prototype laneway houses it hopes will become a model for a whole new form of smaller, efficient urban housing close to existing transit, schools and parks.
