After the commodity and oil price crashes of 2014-2015, the Canadian economy burst through the Alberta oil bubble and right into the Toronto real estate balloon.
Toronto aka Tehranto is the Iranian-Canadians center of gravity, and we all know that Persians love 3 things: dollars, gold and real estate.
In the past 3 years, some of our fellow Persians who lost their jobs after the oil and commodity crashes, have fearlessly dived into the Tehranto property bonanza. They have been heavily aided by equally greedy "mortage brokers" who for $30,000 to 50,000 can provide them with all the right "paperwork" to qualify for 1 million dollar mortages. Something that they cannot qualify based on the true nature of their lack of employment and finances.
So like the USA of 2005 to 2008, the name of the game is bigger-is-better, i.e. a good Persian boy tries to qualify for the biggest mortage, based on the right "paperwork" to buy the biggest property he can fake to qualify for. Then, like some of kind of magic, the property value increases by 25% per year, and babity bibity boo ... after 3 years the house price is doubled, the mortage is paid and the Persian boy goes after an even bigger mortage!
The selling price of some houses in Toronto area have actually increased by a factor of 4 in the past 7 years! Now, this is true magic of Persian smartness (because we are the smartest people on earth). No matter what happened elsewhere, no matter the laws of nature and finance, no matter the rising tide of interest rates ... the house prices in Tehranto will double again soon!
Home prices I see on HGTV in Toronto are rediculous. Beat up old dumps with virtually no land go for $700 to a million dollars. WTF?
Must say that Toronto’s ridiculousness and its property manipulators seem to match those of their Southern California brethren just before market crash…when real estate prices imploded, hitting the rock bottom. There were individuals who bought property, holding them for a week or so, reselling them for BIG profit. All that can be attributed to the weakness of property laws and the system. As a result, Los Angeles and the surroundings, became Macca for homeless and homelessness exploded. When LA Times conducted a survey of people who lived on the streets, they found out that more than 30% held full time employment…and that is/was shameful.
BTW, I thought Canadian had much better sense and better judgment and laws that supported human dignity and values rather than support for money grubbing???!!!
Laws of supply and demand dictates that this lawlessness, in real estate market, reaches a level when prices outpace buying ability/power, resulting a situation when 90% can’t afford to even rent, and that is when market crashes. So, far California has had 3 major meltdowns, despite all that, there are no boundaries to human greed and history keep repeating itself…and same crap happening!
From SAM's good pen, I was waiting for a piece on Tillerson's high risk market, instead of that of Toronto's stinky real estate... The similarities are there... foreign investors, corrupt brokers, greedy financiers and cluelessly nervous homeowners... Something like that...