Region of Waterloo Official Plan

[danbrotherston]

Oh of course they are.

[rangersfan]

February home sales report:

http://www.kwar.ca/february-sales-frenzy/

Some figures for the average detached selling price over the past couple of years :

Oct 2015 $417,891
Nov 2015  $412,581
Nov 2016 $473,104
Feb 2017 $549,691

[Pheidippides]

February home sales report:

http://www.kwar.ca/february-sales-frenzy/

Some figures for the average detached selling price over the past couple of years :

Oct 2015 $417,891
Nov 2015  $412,581
Nov 2016 $473,104
Feb 2017 $549,691

From the article: “The dream of homeownership is very much alive and well,”

For who and for how much longer?

I would like to see the median to know if it was a few outliers skewing the average or if it was across the board.

This is not sustainable and is not going to end well for many:

[jamincan]

There seems to be a tendency for home to sell for more in the first half of the year.

[rangersfan]

It's been steadily climbing (both the median and the average home price which includes all housing types) for the past year and a half.

[tomh009]

It's been steadily climbing (both the median and the average home price which includes all housing types) for the past year and a half.

Do they have median price stats?  I wonder how much the average is skewed by the $1M+ high-end houses.

[MidTowner]

Both the average and median prices can be found in the table on the last page of the release.

For KW only, average price was $455,252 in 2017, versus $360,498 in 2016. Median price was $429,000 in 2017 versus $329,000 in 2016. So it's probably not the sales mix dragging the average up- sale prices on average homes really have gone up at that insane rate.

I couldn't say it better than Pheidippides. These increases are not sustainable. This won't end well for a lot of folks who recently entered the market.

[tomh009]

This is not sustainable and is not going to end well for many:

It's not as bad as, say, Toronto or Vancouver, but it's still massive house price inflation.

The real problems will start when interest rates go up.  New buyers won't be able to afford (mortgage payments for) as big houses, taking some air out of the balloon.  And existing homeowners with huge mortgages will struggle to make payments.

I bought my first house with a 14% mortgage.  That interest rate equates to monthly payments of more than triple what people are paying today.  Even a single percentage point bump, from 4% to 5%, will make it much harder to afford a $400K+ house.   (That's $330 more in mortgage payments each month -- not many people will have that much buffer in their finances.)

[Viewfromthe42]

https://twitter.com/jpags/status/1070792286601138178

A good briefer on one of the most extreme proposals to land use planning rules I can ever remember.

Basically, any municipality in Ontario would be able to pass one bylaw. This bylaw would allow them to ignore Places to Grow, Big Move, Clean Water Act, Great Lakes Protection Act, Greenbelt Act, Metrolinx Act, Ontario Planning and Development Act, and more.

So if a business wanted to come to Waterloo Region and set up a business that would destroy our groundwater and necessitate the long-ago-priced-at-$1 billion pipeline to lake Erie (assuming great lakes protection act being null and void didn't make that a fool's errand), they could come and do that, endager the environment, species at risk, planning rules, transportation rules, be immune to OMB/LPAT... it's like handing a planning nuclear hand grenade to every part of Ontario.

[danbrotherston]

https://twitter.com/jpags/status/1070792286601138178

A good briefer on one of the most extreme proposals to land use planning rules I can ever remember.

Basically, any municipality in Ontario would be able to pass one bylaw. This bylaw would allow them to ignore Places to Grow, Big Move, Clean Water Act, Great Lakes Protection Act, Greenbelt Act, Metrolinx Act, Ontario Planning and Development Act, and more.

So if a business wanted to come to Waterloo Region and set up a business that would destroy our groundwater and necessitate the long-ago-priced-at-$1 billion pipeline to lake Erie (assuming great lakes protection act being null and void didn't make that a fool's errand), they could come and do that, endager the environment, species at risk, planning rules, transportation rules, be immune to OMB/LPAT... it's like handing a planning nuclear hand grenade to every part of Ontario.

Promises made, promises kept...

[tomh009]

https://twitter.com/jpags/status/1070792286601138178

A good briefer on one of the most extreme proposals to land use planning rules I can ever remember.

Basically, any municipality in Ontario would be able to pass one bylaw. This bylaw would allow them to ignore Places to Grow, Big Move, Clean Water Act, Great Lakes Protection Act, Greenbelt Act, Metrolinx Act, Ontario Planning and Development Act, and more.

So if a business wanted to come to Waterloo Region and set up a business that would destroy our groundwater and necessitate the long-ago-priced-at-$1 billion pipeline to lake Erie (assuming great lakes protection act being null and void didn't make that a fool's errand), they could come and do that, endager the environment, species at risk, planning rules, transportation rules, be immune to OMB/LPAT... it's like handing a planning nuclear hand grenade to every part of Ontario.

Promises made, promises kept...

The PC platform said they would "protect the greenbelt in its entirety".

This act will allow a chemical plant (for example) to be built in a protected moraine or groundwater area, as long as it creates 50 jobs. Incredible.

The only good thing is that I have more confidence in our municipal governments than I do in the provincial one.

[KevinL]

The question here is which municipalities will choose to swallow the pill.

[Section ThirtyOne]

"My friends..."

[robdrimmie]

If someone went to Oshawa right now and said "If you pass this bylaw we'll build a plant and hire 2000 people by 2020" that would be a very difficult proposition to refuse.

[danbrotherston]

Promises made, promises kept...

The PC platform said they would "protect the greenbelt in its entirety".

This act will allow a chemical plant (for example) to be built in a protected moraine or groundwater area, as long as it creates 50 jobs. Incredible.

The only good thing is that I have more confidence in our municipal governments than I do in the provincial one.

"Platform" that's a good one...long before that he promised developers he'd open the greenbelt, this is in no way surprising to me.