A series of charts summarizing key residential statistics for the GTA, including an affordability indicator and time series for price, new listings and sales.

September marked the transition from the slower summer market to the busier fall market in the in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Every year, we generally see an uptick in sales, average selling price and listings after Labour Day, and September 2021 was no different. Sales increased relative to August and were also at the third-highest mark on record for the month of September. The average selling price was up both month-over-month and year-over-year

The main federal political parties have released their housing plans. TRREB is encouraged by the attention being given by all parties to housing affordability challenges, something that TRREB has consistently advocated for many years. The affordability challenges we see today are fundamentally rooted in the fact that housing supply has not kept up with population growth, and we continue to push all parties to focus on a sustainable supply of diverse home types that meet the needs and expectations of GTA residents.

Below is a full summary of the various housing and real estate related campaign commitments released so far.

 

Liberal Party logo.

The Liberal Party housing plan is focused on a three-part strategy, including commitments for new government funding to support homeownership; a plan to build more homes to address supply constraints; and measures to establish and protect new rights to buyers, including banning “blind bidding.” Click here to see TRREB’s position on blind bidding.

Unlock homeownership

  • Introduce a tax-free First Home Savings Account that combines the features of both an RRSP and a TFSA to allow Canadians up to age 40 to save up to $40,000 toward their first home, and to withdraw it tax-free to put toward a home purchase with no requirement to repay it.
  • Double the First-Time Home Buyers’ Tax Credit from $5,000 to $10,000 to help with closing costs.  
  • Force CMHC to slash mortgage insurance rates by 25 per cent – a $6,100 savings for the average person, and increase the insured mortgage cut-off from $1 million to $1.25 million and index it to inflation.
  • Proposing a “rent-to-own” program with $1 billion in new funding to help renters become homeowners.

Build more homes

  • Invest $4 billion in a Housing Accelerator Fund for the creation of 100,000 new middle-class homes in four years. This will provide the tools to municipalities to increase supply, reduce approval times, establish inclusionary zoning bylaws and encourage transit-oriented development.
  • A promise of $2.7 billion over four years to build or repair more affordable homes.
  • Convert empty office and retail space into market-based housing.
  • Introduce a Multigenerational Home Renovation tax credit to be used for adding a secondary unit by being able to claim a 15% tax credit up to $50,000 in renovation and construction costs.

Protect your rights

  • Put a 2-year ban on new foreign ownership in Canadian housing, so foreign buyers will not be allowed to purchase a non-recreational, residential property.
  • Implement a 1% national tax on non-resident, non-Canadian owners of vacant, underused housing (as outlined in Budget 2021), including foreign-owned vacant land within large urban areas.
  • Will review the tax treatment of large corporate owners of residential properties such as REITs to curb excessive profits, and will also review the down payment requirements for investment properties to limit speculation.
  • Strengthen federal oversight of the housing market by establishing the Canada Financial Crimes Agency as Canada’s first-ever national law enforcement agency solely dedicated to investigating and combatting all forms of major financial crime, including money laundering in the housing market. Additionally, the power of federal regulators will be increased so they can respond to housing price fluctuations.
  • Establish an anti-flipping tax on residential properties, requiring properties to be held for at least 12 months to reduce speculative demand.
  • Introduce a Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights to ensure the process of buying a home is fair, open and transparent, including banning blind bidding, establishing a legal right to a home inspection, ensuring total transparency on the history of recent house sale prices on title searches, requiring real estate agents to disclose to all participants in a transaction when they are involved in both sides of a potential sale, creating a publicly accessible beneficial ownership registry, ensuring banks and lenders offer mortgage deferrals for up to 6 months in event of job loss or major life event, requiring mortgage lenders act in the buyer’s best interest, and stopping “renovictions.”

Liberal Housing Plan

Full Liberal Platform

 

Conservative Party logo.

The Conservatives are promising to ease housing affordability through a three-pronged approach that involves increasing housing supply, tackling money laundering and foreign investors, and making mortgages more affordable.

Increase supply by building 1 million homes in the next three years

  • Leverage federal infrastructure investments to increase housing supply by:
  • Building public transit infrastructure that connects homes and jobs by bringing public transit to where people are buying homes; and
  • Requiring municipalities receiving federal funding for public transit to increase density near the funded transit.
  • Review the real estate portfolio of the federal government – the largest property owner in the country with over 37,000 buildings – and release at least 15% for housing while improving the Federal Lands Initiative.
  • Incent developers to build the housing Canadians both want and need, by:
  • Encouraging Canadians to invest in rental housing by extending the ability to defer capital gains tax when selling a rental property and reinvesting in rental housing, something that is currently excluded; and
  • Exploring converting unneeded office space to housing.
  • Enhance the viability of using Community Land Trusts for affordable housing by creating an incentive for corporations and private landowners to donate property to Land Trusts for the development of affordable housing.

Tackle corrupt activities driving up costs of housing, money laundering and foreign investors

  • Implement comprehensive changes to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, and give FINTRAC, law enforcement, and prosecutors the tools necessary to identify, halt, and prosecute money laundering in Canadian real estate markets.
  • Establish a federal Beneficial Ownership Registry for residential property.
  • Ban foreign investors not living in or moving to Canada from buying homes here for a two-year period after which it will be reviewed.
  • Encourage foreign investment in purpose-built rental housing that is affordable to Canadians.

Make mortgages more affordable

  • Encourage the offering of seven- to ten-year mortgages to provide stability for both first-time home buyers and lenders.
  • Remove the requirement to conduct a stress test when a homeowner renews a mortgage with another lender.
  • Increase the limit on eligibility for mortgage insurance and index it to home price inflation, allowing those in high-priced real estate markets with less than a 20% down payment an opportunity at homeownership.
  • Fix the mortgage stress test to stop discriminating against small business owners, contractors, and other non-permanent employees including casual workers.
  • No capital gains tax on the sale of Canadians’ principal residences.

Full Conservative Platform

 

NDP Party logo.

The NDP’s housing plan focuses on making housing more affordable for families while helping young Canadians and families buy a home they can afford, and build 500,000 new affordable homes in ten years with half done within the first five years.

Increase affordable housing supply

  • Building 500,000 affordable homes in ten years.
  • Work in partnership with provinces and municipalities, build capacity for social, community, and affordable housing providers, to provide rental support for co-ops, and meet environmental energy efficiency goals. 
  • Set up dedicated fast-start funds to streamline the application process for co-ops, social, and non-profit housing.
  • Mobilize federal resources and lands for these projects, turning unused and underused properties into vibrant new communities.

Go after “big money” investors by:

  • Putting a 20% Foreign Buyers’ tax on the sale of homes to individuals who are not Canadian citizens or Permanent Residents. 
  • Target money laundering and organized crime within the housing sector by making it harder to hide behind numbered companies and giving regulators more teeth.

Make mortgages more affordable

  • Re-introduce 30-year terms to CMHC insured mortgages on entry-level homes for first-time home buyers. 
  • Double the Home Buyers’ Tax Credit to $1,500 to help with closing costs.
  • Provide resources to facilitate co-housing, such as model co-ownership agreements and connections to local resources, and ease access to financing by offering CMHC-backed co-ownership mortgages.

Housing climate action and broadband

  • Require large scale building retrofits in all sectors, to have retrofitting in all buildings in Canada by 2050, beginning with upgrades to all buildings built before 2020 in the next 20 years.  
  • Help families make energy efficient improvements to their homes through low-interest loans.
  • Canadians to have access to affordable, reliable high-speed broadband within four years.

Full NDP Platform

 

Green Party logo.

The Green Party’s housing plan focuses on investing in affordable, non-profit, co-operative and supportive housing.

  • The federal government to redefine “affordable housing” using an updated formula.
  • Propose stronger regulation of foreign investment in real estate.
  • Create a federal “empty home tax” that would apply to foreign and corporate property owners who leave units vacant.
  • Pledge to work with other parties to address homelessness and expensive housing costs by declaring a national housing emergency.
  • Create a retroactive benefit payment for tenants.
  • Establish a national moratorium on rental evictions during and after the pandemic, and establish rent and vacancy controls.
  • Support a greater share of tax revenues and decision-making authority for municipalities including use of city charters.
  • Allocate 1% of GST to housing and other municipal infrastructure projects on ongoing basis.
  • Create a national green retrofit program for existing residential, commercial, institutional and industrial buildings.
  • Update the national building code to require all new construction and major renovations to older buildings meet net-zero standards by 2030.
  • Work with provinces and cities to build at least 300,000 affordable housing units over the next ten years.

Full Green Party Platform

A series of charts summarizing key residential statistics for the GTA, including an affordability indicator and time series for price, new listings and sales.

The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) is reporting the third-best sales result on record for the month of August. While the market has taken its regular summer breather, it is clear that the demand for ownership housing remains strong. At the same time, the supply of listings is down. The result has been tighter market conditions and sustained competition between buyers, resulting in double-digit annual increases in selling prices.

In response to the federal election announcement to ban “blind bidding” in the home buying and selling process, TRREB President Kevin Crigger has this to say:

"The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) is encouraged by the attention being given by federal political parties, to housing affordability challenges which TRREB has been sounding the alarm about for a number of years.  As TRREB has consistently noted that issues around housing affordability are, and will continue to be, one of the most important issues facing our region, our province, and our country.

It is critical, however, that government actions be carefully considered to ensure that they aid in solving these challenges directly and do not create a host of additional challenges.  Consumer choice and consumer privacy should be paramount in shaping government policy. Federal public policy should recognize the right that consumers have to privacy, and should allow them to consent to the disclosure of personal information, instead of penalizing home buyers and sellers. Punishing home buyers and sellers for wanting to keep their financial decisions private for the largest transaction of their lives is a substantial overreach of the government.

Nevertheless, we are encouraged that the federal political parties are making commitments to address this issue from the supply side which is the only way to chart a path forward to ensure greater affordability. Policies targeted at increasing the supply of homes for sale, as well as incentives for home buyers, are key objectives TRREB has advocated for many years.

It is also important for federal parties to understand that collaboration with other levels of government, specifically at the municipal level, is essential to bringing on new supply. The federal government of the day cannot simply promise to build one million plus homes over the course of a four-year mandate without buy-in from provincial and municipal governments who actually oversee the development approvals process in Canada.

These are the solutions that governments should be focused on."

A series of charts summarizing key residential statistics for the GTA, including an affordability indicator and time series for price, new listings and sales.

With almost 9,400 sales reported in July 2021, demand for ownership housing remained well-above average for the time of year despite being below the record July result set a year earlier. Market conditions actually tightened relative to July 2020, with sales accounting for a greater share of new listings compared to last year. The sellers’ market conditions sustained a double-digit annual rate of price growth.

The number of condominium apartment rental transactions in Q2 2021 was more than double the number reported in Q2 2020. The number of rentals was also up compared to Q1 2021 by 13.3 per cent. Growth in rental transactions also outstripped growth in the number of units listed, both on a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis.

Second quarter 2021 GTA condominium apartment sales were up substantially compared to Q2 2020, but ebbed slightly compared to Q1 2021, following the broader market trend. Competition between buyers continued to accelerate compared to last year, which led to year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter average price increases.

As City Council meets today, the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) is urging Councillors to carefully consider the implementation details of two items on Council’s agenda: a new Vacant Home Tax (VHT) and a new home energy rating and disclosure program. “As is often the case, the devil is in the details. The new Vacant Home Tax and proposed home energy rating and disclosure programs are not necessarily bad ideas, but City Council has to get the implementation right.

A series of charts summarizing key residential statistics for the GTA, including an affordability indicator and time series for price, new listings and sales.

June home sales were up compared to last year, but remained below the March 2021 peak and were lower than the number of transactions reported for May 2021, consistent with the regular seasonal trend. The average selling price in June increased by double digits compared to last year as well, but the annual rate of increase moderated compared to the previous three months.

Thirteen Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) Members have one thing in common. They have all received accolades for their tremendous dedication and tireless commitment to their communities, the organization, and the real estate industry as a whole. This year, TRREB handed out a record number of awards at the spring Annual Meeting held virtually on June 3.

Teranet, Canada’s leader in modernizing registry and data intelligence platforms for the Canadian real estate market, and Stratus Data Systems, a leader in MLS® platforms have joined forces to launch REALM to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB). This modern, mobile-first new national front-end Multi-List Platform (MLP) merges land registry and MLS® data to create a singular and enhanced experience for TRREB and its partner board Members.

The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) will add BrokerBay, an advanced showing management ecosystem, to its core products and services for Members this fall. TRREB’s newly announced partnership with BrokerBay will give our Members and Partner Board MLS® System users access to a brokerage level showing service solution with advanced features. The full suite of user-friendly tools can be leveraged by REALTORS® and front-desk administrators to schedule and manage showing appointments, provide 3D virtual showings, register offers, submit documents, manage property notifications, and more.