December 6 2017
Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News
December 6 2017. In today’s news: living the dream, normal November home sales, the LRT impact on value, selling to a serious homebuyer, tech jobs in KW, international students at Canadian universities, real estate cycles, Canada’s prosperity place in the world.
Living the dream
When I’ve traveling, I always like to imagine that I live in the place. “Would I like to live here someday? What would I do here? What would my lifestyle be like? What would I do with my time? For work? For fun?”
A few days ago we were in a little seaside town called Back Bay. It is small and quiet. So quiet that there was only one place open but that place served up some awesome espresso! We had rented a motorcycle for a couple of days and we were just meandering down the coast, stopping here and there – a walk on a beach here, a cup of coffee there. Some fruit for lunch, a scenic lookout…in Back Bay I decided that I’d open up a little wine bar that played jazz every night starting at 5pm and ending at about 2. What a dream.
Later I asked my old friend Doug who has been in Taiwan for nearly twenty years now about living near Kenting and during our conversation I realized that he lives here. He works here. His life is here. He doesn’t see the idyllic windswept beaches, the gorgeous mountains, the little harbours and other places to stop and take it all in — that’s just for tourists.
That’s just for dreamers.
Normal November in KW home sales
November home sales in KW were on par with the five year average of 454 sales. This is down from last year. Looks like things might have returned to a more balanced equilibrium.
In terms of average prices, they are up about 8% compared to November 2016, but down from the springtime highs.
Value of new builds along LRT corridor worth $2.1B
The report, entitled Monitoring Change in the Central Transit Corridor (CTC) – 2016 Report, looked at investment in the corridor and found:
- $600M is the assessed value of properties per year.
- 23 per cent of property taxes were generated from 2011 to 2016.
- Property transactions increased to over $1B in 2016. Six years worth of transaction data totalled $5B.
- $308M value of building permits from 2011 to 2016 totalling an estimated $2.1B.
- $166M in 2016 building permit value which adds up to $590M of investment over six years.
How to tell if your homebuyer is serious
Are they pre-approved? Are all of the family members shopping together? Look for these and other clues to your prospective home buyer.
8.6% of local jobs are in Tech
Waterloo Region is fastest-growing tech talent market in Canada and the second-fastest in North America. There are about 776,000 tech talent jobs in Canada, representing just over 5% of the total workforce. Waterloo Region’s 21,200 tech talent jobs in 2016 represented about 2.7% of the country’s tech workforce, but 8.6% of total local jobs. The region added 8,400 tech jobs from 2011 to 2016.
Canadian universities with the most international students.
Here are lists with the percentage of students from outside Canada in the first-year undergraduate class in fall 2016 and percentage of graduate students from outside Canada in fall 2016.
Some questions answered about Canadian real estate cycles
“With regards to Toronto and prices. Toronto didn’t have a 30 year bull market, it took until 2008 to recover from the 1990s down cycle. If you bought in 1989, the inflation adjusted value wasn’t realized for 22 years. Even up to 2015, Toronto real estate was fairly valued.”
Canada is eight most prosperous county in the world
The Legatum Institute measures prosperity by looking not only at economic factors such as income per person, but at broader social conditions such as governance, education, health and personal freedom.
