General Housing and Rental Market

[Spokes]

Housing Market

[Spokes]

Steady housing market forecasted for region
May 22, 2014 | Rose Simone | The Record | Link

KITCHENER — Despite doom and gloom predictions about the potential for a downturn in the Canada's housing market, the outlook is clear and steady in Waterloo Region and Guelph.

Anthony Passarelli, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.'s market analyst for this region, said all the key factors — employment, migration and mortgage rates — appear to be relatively stable. He's forecasting that local home prices will rise this year and in 2015, albeit at a slower pace than in some of the past years.

"We see it as being a balanced market," he said in presenting the corporation's spring market outlook to municipal staff at Waterloo Regional headquarters in Kitchener on Thursday.

In Waterloo Region, about 2,300 new residential units will be built in 2014 and about 2,625 new units in 2015, Passarelli said. Much of that increase will be in the form of apartments and townhouses rather than single-detached homes, he said.

In Guelph, home construction will decline this year because of a shortage of land to build on. The corporation says that about 700 new housing units will be built in the Guelph area this year. That will rise to 825 new units next year. Apartment units will make up the largest share of the new construction in Guelph as well.

Passarelli said the outlook for existing homes looks fairly stable.

Buyers are gradually coming back into the market after a brutal winter, he said. "We seasonally adjust our data to account for regular seasonal variations, but this winter was even worse," he said.

The housing corporation is projecting price increases of about 3.5 per cent in the coming year. "There is still going to be price growth, but at a slower pace," Passarelli said. "It's not an apocalyptic story of prices falling."

He said Waterloo Region could see a slight dip in manufacturing jobs this year, especially with the Schneider's meat plant closing down. But there is still job growth in areas such as educational services and construction.

He noted that a lot of the software engineers laid off by BlackBerry are being absorbed by other high-tech companies in the area.

Passarelli expects to see an upswing in manufacturing jobs next year with economic recovery in the United States gaining speed.

Meanwhile, migration into Waterloo Region, currently at about 3,000 people a year, will remain steady. Most people coming into the region are immigrants who tend to rent initially, so that will help keep demand for rental units steady, Passarelli said.

Mortgage rates will likely start to edge upward in the latter half of 2015, he said. That could make it more difficult for some renters to become home buyers. But on the whole, Passarelli doesn't think a small rate increase will have a big impact in this area because housing is still relatively affordable compared to other large markets in Ontario.

Demand is shifting away from the higher-end price ranges, Passarelli said. That means there is more of a buyer's market for houses worth $500,000 or more. In the $250,000 to $400,000 price range, it's more of a seller's market.

"So there isn't as much of an incentive for the developers to build more of the detached homes at the higher price range," Passarelli said.

The apartment vacancy rate will likely go up this year because the supply should outpace demand, he said. But in 2015, the corporation is forecasting a tighter vacancy rate with stronger demand outpacing supply.

[panamaniac]

4,450 housing units were started in the Region in 2014, compared to 1.840 in 2013.  Most of the increase is attributed to new apartment units started in Waterloo (1,543) and Kitchener (1,164).

http://www.therecord.com/news-story/5250...tion-boom/

[Markster]

New survey results shed light on Kitchener-Waterloo rental market
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-...45?cmp=rss

Carried out by a team of researchers at the university, the survey asked three thousand households what they're renting now, how much they're paying, and what an ideal rental would be for them.
[...]
Students, for example, are happy to be in high rises with access to transit, while seniors think less about transit and are more concerned with access to services. Across the board, though, everyone was concerned with safety and affordability.