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John Pasalis  in  Toronto Real Estate News Rarely does a week go by when there isn’t a new economic forecast about the real estate market. For nearly a decade, the negative forecasts have been predicting a 25% decline in house prices while the positive ones have been predicting a “soft landing” for Toronto’s real estate market. Both predictions have yet to come true. Readers often ask me how this is possible. How can so many economists be so wrong about the market for so many consecutive... Read Full Story

Bob Aaron in Legal Frank and Dolores Lipischak are next-door neighbours to Diana DeWolf and Joe Russ on Caille Ave. in the town of Lakeshore in Essex County. Their homes front on Lake St. Clair and their deep lots back onto the municipal street. When the Lipischaks bought their house in 1969, there was a wire fence running north-south separating the two properties. Shortly afterward, Frank Lipischak replaced it with a new chain link fence in the same location. The fence that was intended... Read Full Story

Urmi Desai in Top Ten Neighbourhoods , Home Buying , Toronto Neighbourhoods It's been an exciting week for our Realosophy Analytics spotlight on the relationship between School Quality and Real Estate Values . Following our first list, Best Toronto Schools for 2012 , we were profiled in the Toronto Star . The feedback we've been hearing from you is consistent with our premise: while we are all aware that EQAO scores tell only a part of a school's story, these scores nonetheless... Read Full Story

David Larock in Mortgages and Finance , Home Buying Employment and income levels provide critical gauges of the underlying strength in an economy. In the most basic sense, when good jobs are plentiful and incomes are rising faster than the rate of inflation, economies grow. When unemployment levels rise and average income levels can’t keep pace with inflation, economies contract. That’s why employment data are so important – they are the canaries in our economic mine shaft. Statistics... Read Full Story

Urmi Desai in  Top Ten Neighbourhoods , Home Buying , Toronto Neighbourhoods It's school time at Realosophy Analytics ! Our month-long feature looks at the special relationship between real estate and schools. Today's post looks at the top elementary schools in Toronto as measured by the province's latest standardized EQAO scores . While it's tempting to tape this school list to your goal wall/fridge/dreams and "make it so",  it's important to remember that EQAO scores only tell us so... Read Full Story

Urmi Desai in Top Ten Neighbourhoods , Toronto Neighbourhoods , Home Buying It’s time to get schooled! We’ve updated www.realosophy.com with the latest 2011 EQAO data for over 1,800 GTA schools and the Realosophy Analytics team have taken a long, hard look at the data. Over the next few weeks, we'll be reporting on the symbiotic relationship that is Toronto real estate and Toronto schools. Today, we’ll start with an overview of some key trends. Move Over Starbucks Look behind the... Read Full Story

David Larock in Mortgages and Finance , Home Buying Last week’s big news was the U.S. Federal Reserve’s announcement on Wednesday that “economic conditions - including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run - are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal-funds rate at least through late 2014”. Point of Clarification: The U.S. federal-funds rate, also called the policy rate, is the U.S. equivalent to the overnight rate of... Read Full Story

John Pasalis  in  Real Estate Roundup     Real Estate Bubble Talk It's great to see the mainstream media stick to what sells papers this week. Canadian Business, Macleans and the Globe and Mail all jumped on the real estate bubble band wagon (again) this week.  Unfortunately I can't say that any of the articles were very insightful.  Most were filled with "what if" type analysis.  What if Europe collapses, what if China slows down, what if 50,000 households default on their mortgage at... Read Full Story

Urmi Desai in 5 Questions , Home Buying The blogosphere has been abuzz about “ FML Listings ” an anonymous blog launched by a frustrated Toronto home buyer. FML’s MO is as simple as it is addictive: post a not-so-hot house with a whopping price tag listed on realtor.ca and add raw commentary. See for example, this post about a $739,000 house at Jane and Finch: Does this mean that not only can I not afford to live where I want in North York because of the million dollar bungalows, and I... Read Full Story

David Larock in Mortgages and Finance , Home Buying This quarter’s Mortgage Market Update is a good news/bad news story.   I’m an optimist at heart so let’s start with the good news. Barring a glob al and systemic financial meltdown, our mortgage rates will probably stay at their current rock-bottom levels for an extended period of anywhere from one to five years. The bad news is that these ultra-low rates will be the by-product of a massive global deleveraging process, which will be as... Read Full Story