One of the agents on my team just asked what I was writing about for tomorrow’s blog, and I told him.

“Oh, so then it’s ‘mail-it-in Friday’ then?” he replied.

Tsk Tsk.  I take a lot of crap in here, you know.  I might be the team lead but man-oh-man, am I the brunt of more than my fair share of jokes.

That’s fine, think of today’s blog post what you will.

But I’m fully aware of how readership declines on the Friday of a long weekend, so with that in mind, I figured I would save my stats-heavy post about the increase in home prices in Durham Region for Tuesday, and today, I’m going to provide you with a must-read list of real estate articles.

I read just about every real estate article I can get my hands on.  It’s an occupational hazard, and while I differentiate reading Globe & Mail articles about real estate from watching “Million Dollar Listing” with my wife (that damn show is on in my house every night…), I will say that many of these real estate articles bother me.  Mainly the ones about the federal government “helping” the housing market or ridiculous ideas on how to “eliminate” blind bidding, but typically after I’ve beat a dead horse to death and beyond, I can’t stand reading about the reincarnation of the corpse.

There were a few solid reads this week that I want to draw your attention to, and I feel as though this won’t be the last we’ve heard of them.

The Globe & Mail ran this article on Thursday:

“The Debate Over Buying A Home Versus Renting Is Done – Renting Lost And It Was Never Close”

The columnist is Rob Carrick, who has written more about personal finance in the last decade than anybody I know.

Rob has brought financial literacy to many in a society where few are born with it.  His columns might seem like a “Wealthy Barber” read to those of you who have a business degree or work in finance, but to so much of the population, it’s been invaluable.

But Rob has also written a lot about real estate from a bearish perspective over the last decade or more, and I’ve personally sat with him and discussed our outlooks on the market in Toronto.  So to see this article now is a bit of Monday-morning quarterbacking.

I know from experience that columnists don’t choose the headlines; editors do.  So perhaps the Globe & Mail was looking for a sexy and provocative tag on his column that was actually pretty tame.

I just found the headline to be pathetic.

To say, “renting lost, and it was never close,” in the fall of 2021 is like saying “It’s official: digital music has replaced the compact disc.”

From the article:

The realty company Royal LePage has released a study it commissioned on whether it’s better financially to own a home or rent. The conclusion was that owning was more financially beneficial over the long term than renting in 91 per cent of the cases analyzed, assuming a 20-per-cent down payment.

Bulletin for Royal LePage and the rest of Big Real Estate: The buy-versus-renting debate is long over. Buying won the battle for hearts and minds, and it was never close.

Keeping the rent-versus-buy argument going is the most pointless exercise in personal finance. Our reality is that renting is how a growing percentage of the population will live unless home prices fall. In this country’s housing crisis, the plight of renters is worse than the unaffordability of houses.

–

I can’t believe I’m wasting this topic in a Friday Headlines blog, but then again, haven’t we already said enough about this?

The headline alone is clickbait-enough:

“One Million New Homes Needed In Ontario In Next 10 Years To End ‘Cruel Game Of Musical Chairs'”

Great read in the Financial Post!

I would also add that the sub-headline sums it up nicely:

“Surging house prices are prompting a number of young families to drive until they qualify.”

That’s exactly what they’re doing.  They’re saying, “How far do I need to drive out of the GTA before I can afford what I want?”

Or perhaps it’s actually, “How far do I need to drive out of the GTA until I want to buy what I can afford?”

Because very few people are happy about what they get for what they can afford, and so many of them are also evaluating what life would be like with a 90-minute daily commute, or what life would be like if they quit their job at RBC Capital Markets and moved to North Bay to run a hardware store.

The struggle is real, y’all.

Wednesday’s blog post showed just how hot the suburbs are, and with a 31% year-over-year change in average home price in Durham Region, it shows you just how far people are moving, and how many of them have the same idea.

From the article:

With Ontario’s population growing rapidly, one policy think tank argues that Canada’s most populous province will need about one million new homes over the next 10 years.

Ottawa-based Smart Prosperity Institute and Ontario Home Builder’s Association arrived at the near-million home figure after exploring how many homes and what types of homes would be needed to reach the needs of the anticipated 2.27 million more people who will reside in the province over the next 10 years, according to the Ontario Ministry of Finance.

The report determined that 910,000 homes will be needed for new families, 65,000 units will address current supply gaps in the market, and 25,000 would provide a cushion for any other unexpected additional population growth during this period. Of the 910,000 units for new households primarily for couples planning on having children, the report projects that 195,000 will reside in high-rise apartments and the remaining 715,000 will live in all other forms of housing.

“The goal of building one million new homes in the next 10 years presents a challenge for Ontario,” said Mike Moffatt, the senior director of policy and innovation at Smart Prosperity Institute. “However, the prize is substantial: ensuring an adequate supply of high-quality available and attainable housing, while at the same time driving economic prosperity and enabling climate action. Failure to do so will make it impossible for Ontario to attract and retain the talent it needs to compete in the global economy.”

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This next one is rather, umm, uhhh, inventive.

Read the headline:

“Posthaste: Small Towns Could Face Even Bigger Housing Correction Than The Cities Red-Flagged By CMHC”

I see the words “correction” and “red-flagged” and I already know where this is going.

Then I see the sub-headline: Pandemic price gains of over 40% have further to fall.

Alright, so this is written by a market bear.

But their choice of photo to accompany the article is just silly:

The only thing cheezier would have been an actual photo of a tire-fire.  Or maybe a tractor-trailer driving off a cliff.  Or a bull getting slaughtered.

Look at those flames!

It’s silly.

It’s like this:

Or this:

Or even this:

Right……….

If you’re not familiar with Posthaste, it’s a regular feature in the Financial Post that is always alarmist and often lacks substance.

In fact, I don’t really have an excerpt to share from this article because nothing in the article itself can hold a candle to that headline.

Here’s the intro:

Good Morning!

Canada’s housing agency caused a stir last month when it warned of a high risk of correction in home valuations.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. in September raised its market risk assessment to high from moderate for only the second time, the last being during the 2016/17 housing boom.

“The detection of price acceleration at the national level, alongside persistent overvaluation imbalances, prompted the change,” it said in the assessment.

It’s like a grade-eight book report.

Market risk assessment from the CMHC?

Who cares.

They issue this every year, and the market has done nothing but go up.  I can probably pull a “market risk assessment” from 2007 in which the CMHC said the market was “over-valued” and yet house prices have appreciated every year since.

You know what would have made this article better?

Nicholas Cage.

Lemme see here….

…..ah, right!

–

No matter how hot the condominium market is, developers will have to stay ahead of the proverbial curve if they want to be in business long-term.

We talk incessantly about the cost of housing, the struggle for families to get into the market, and how and where we’re going to house people.

Maybe this story is the breath of fresh air we’ve been gasping for:

“On The Map: A Family-Centred Condo Community Comes With Its Own Daycare”

The cynical side of me wonders, how?

The even more cynical side of me says, oh sure, in a pandemic, no less.

But maybe this was an eventuality?

Do you remember when Goodlife Fitness put daycares in their gyms so that parents could drop the kids off and work out?  Life is busy and life is hard.

It was only a matter of time before we asked the condominium corporation to look after our children, right?

From the article: