Will housing prices drop in 2020 and 2021?
(Published on - 10/6/2020 12:52:29 PM)
Will housing prices drop?
According to:
Chris Seepe is a published writer and author, ‘landlording’ course instructor, president of the Landlords Association of Durham, and a commercial real estate broker of record at Aztech Realty in Toronto, specializing in income-generating and multi-residential investment properties.
Many pundits and government spokespeople say residential owner-occupied and investment housing prices will drop. Not a chance. Housing prices and rents will continue to rise despite mortgage defaults and rising unemployment because:
- No reduction in property taxes and development charges
- Three to five-year approval times
- Hefty fees-in-lieu of park lands
- Costly government-mandated plans, studies, red tape
- Brutal anti-landlord tenancy legislation
- Unjust landlord-targeted municipal bylaws
- Policies like the landlord responsibility to “accommodate to the point of undue hardship”
- Failed Landlord and Tenant Board, multi-year backlog of applications
- Nine to 12-month rent-free evictions backlog costing arguably a half-billion dollars in lost rental income
- Government licensing fees for housing
- Double-digit increases in construction labour costs and materials, especially glass, concrete and steel
- A critical shortage and decreasing number of construction labourers
- A flood of investors wanting real estate hard assets versus volatile and unstable stocks
- Low bank and bond ROI rates, decreasing dividend-paying stocks
- Media and government hype for self-serving reasons that promote tenant-landlord tensions
- Rapid increase in people working from home increasing infrastructure and municipal services costs
- Overarching demand that far outpaces supply
- Decades of government failures to encourage housing construction
- Determined homeowner wannabees placing multiple offers
