Canadian Chat → [Rant] House prices in Toronto

Not enough. What is for sale on your street in Woodstock is irrelevant. Ask any agent and they will tell you that they have more people seriously looking to buy than there are houses available. Of course some areas are worse than others, especially the "good school" districts, but in general supply and demand is in play.

I'm less than two blocks from 2 public schools, and 3 blocks from a second. And less than 2km from the new hospital, and less than 0.25km from southside park. Places are just stuck on the market for way too long here. Heck my buddy down in Sarnia is seeing the same problem, he's been in real estate for nearly 10 years, his partner for nearly 40. The last time he saw something like this it was back in the 80's, and it wasn't nearly as bad. 3 years ago, he went back to school because the length of time a place was staying on the market was almost a year. Right now it's right about 8 months. But he's making enough money to stay where he wants to be.

Yeah, but it's still Woodstock, Toyota plant or not.

You're right, she's insane. There are few neighbourhoods that the prices are quite that high with rundown homes (unless you're heading to the lakeshore). ie. 800K+ homes. Buying at 600K and then dumping 200K into one of them she's likely over-improved (or replaced things that didn't need it).

Decades ago my parents sold their home. They guy who bought it got talked into changing the tile floor (ran through 2 main rooms and a large hallway).... two shades darker by a decorator.

We have 4 Toyota plants here actually, plus a major GM NPDC, and a Firestone plant, along with Purina factory, and ADM plant and other junk. Not forgetting that we're 30mins from London and K/W. Along with 3 major truck depots. But trivialities like that or not. People in the GTA always did believe they're the centre of the universe.

Too bad he's a prick in real life... And that's first hand experience.... Anyways.

I won't pretend to understand TO real estate; but I will get on the "life's passing by, while searching for the holy grail" band wagon. Everything in life is some degree of compromise; 3 years have passed... How long are you prepared to wait?

maybe it's time you lay down the law on your wife. how many good houses have you missed waiting for that perfect one. when me and the wife looked all the houses in this town were over priced shit. House we ended up with was not perfect but fit our needs. It was a good house in move in shape and did not need any work well we did the roof and I had central AC added. a house is not forever not like you can't move again in a few years.

I think we over paid by a like 2500 to 5000 but I was sick of looking and nothing else was worth a damn. I'm not in my dream home but it's a nice home for the next few years.

Most likely property taxes as Woodstock has an incredibly high delinquency rate on their taxes.

Heard that as well from a trade on one of the shows. I wonder how many thousands of contractors across North America have been raked across the coals because they didn't do a gut and bring in every trade under the sun with the best materials and all on a low budget that the homeowner demanded for a reno.

Exactly what I would say. In 5 years when your little ones are more "grown up" and are outgrowing the space I feel like Mrs. Donoreo might loosen up the standards a little bit...

It sounds like you're coming down to a space crunch, which is ok for now, but once they have friends and are going and doing things, you're going to find things pretty crowded...but I'm sure you'll figure things out by then, sounds like she's a tough cookie to please though...but what do I Know, I'm not married anymore lol so maybe its good to keep yours happy.

We already have a space crunch. Art of the problem is she is being overly picky because she does not want to move again until the girls leave home. More pressure to get it right.

If I were you I would just stay out of the entire process since she's wasting your time. Wait until she finally sees something she likes and then go see it.

From the sounds of it, she is the law. End of story.

Then he can nit pick over it and make her sweat for awhile and see how she likes it.

I remember when my future wife and I were looking for a house to
buy. I couldn't believe the absolutely stupid reasons she rejected houses.

It got to the point where I said "F*ck it" and told her I had had enough.

A year later she asked if we could look again....within 2 weeks we
found the place we lived in for 15 years. Cost $125K sold for $600K.

FaxCap

I'd be interested in seeing the list of things that much match for you to bid on a home.

I'd like to see that sentence make sense Sorry, could not resist!

She asked me yesterday what to cut out of our list of wants. I said that list is not the problem, it is the internal spreadsheet she keeps (she does a spreadsheet for everything - guests at the cottage and it is a spreadsheet to cover rooms, meals, etc) that is the problem. I told her it is "all the little things" that all of a sudden become important.

She does assure me that she agrees we need a new house. It was her that started the process!

It doesn't surprise me that Mike is that way. He's pretty intense on his shows and I'm sure he's asked to tone it down for tv. Still, when you see some the shit he has to fix I'd be in a pissy mood too. Especially when a lot of the issues are real bush-league or common sense mistakes. Or just the original contractors not caring about the job.

I agree he does go overboard on the renos. Unless you had a pile of money and time most average people could never afford to what he does.

You've commented several times on how fussy your wife is about everything.

You must be pretty impressive if she was willing to commit to marrying you!

I'd love to see the spreadsheet analysis she did on that!

BTW, I know what the house-hunting frustration is like. It took me a year to buy my last Toronto house. I had a very specific area in mind and pretty much every offer ended up in a bidding war. I finally got the house I wanted when my agent was able to snag it for me before it went on the market, and worked an exclusive with the owner.

In such a case, a spreadsheet analysis precedes spreading the sheet.

That info is classified

Only a year, that would be nice.

I suppose I shouldn't tell you that I bought the current house after less than a week of searching!

To some degree that's the difference between Toronto proper and the burbs of GTA. But OTOH even around here houses are rarely on the market for more than a few weeks, and prices are rising nicely. There was actually a competing bid on it but obviously not serious enough, and down the street there was an outright bidding war that ended up above asking. Nothing like Toronto drama, though.

I can top that, I looked at 3 houses in one night, and put an offer in on the third. It was mine the next day.

Mind you that was almost 13yrs ago and I don't have a "location location location" problem.

My friends (lawyer and psychiatrist) are looking in the Beaches and Forest Hill.

I predict a 1.5M purchase price.

I bought my current home within 2 weeks but my wife and I decided after a few days of looking to find the house with 80% of what we were looking for. Things can be changed over time. Luckily my wife isn't that picky.

Beach yes, Forest Hill....maybe. It would be higher there.

Well then his Mrs. will have to see more patients every day to pay the mortgage. Not to mention, it won't be CMHC insured because I know they don't have 500k to put down as a downpayment.

But she's a Doctor and all her Doctor friends have $1M plus homes so despite being otherwise financially responsible, she has a "dream house" in mind and she's gonna get it.

My buddy in the mean time, with his 140k salary and pending law school debt in the US (and his very frugal nature), is not too happy about this.

$1M plus home is nothing in Toronto. I will be honest and we are TRYING to keep it under $1M but having a hard time finding one, as you know.

Most of the stuff shown on his shows is bare minimum as far as I'm concerned.

There's 3 ways to do structure:
- a wrong way
- code way
- the right way.
Code is the bare minimum, but 'code' is the result of the lobbying efforts of the construction industry to tone down the requirements of what the government would otherwise impose.

Give you a few examples
.... when I was building a cottage (I was GC), code specifies 16" OC floor joist. Weyerhauser TJI to span the 25' depth of the great room was specified as 11-7/8" tall 300C joists. But I wanted essentially zero deflection in the floor joists - to deliver what is called NCR "no china rattle" - when walking across the floor. So I upped the joists to 400C joists at 12" OC. I also 'blocked' the floor at 2' centres to further stiffen it, vs. 4' centres. Cost me about 6% more on the floor structure to do all this.

Since the cottage is built to somewhere between R2000 and PassiveHaus standard, it's virtually airtight and special considerations are required to not create negative air pressure in the place. There are some wood-burning fireplaces, each with their own dedicated air intakes for combustion air. For the kitchen range hood (1600CFM), I installed a dedicated makeup air intake on the roof that passes the outdoor air past a temperature/humidity sensor. If the outdoor air is cooler than desired, a boiler kicks in and preheats the incoming makeup air so as not to to cool the house down. There have two boilers which heat the place - each can keep the place at normal temperatures. So why two? Because one can fail or be taken off-line for servicing. Controllers cycle between each boiler to 'level' the wear and tear on each and to make sure that each one is working - an important detail for a place that is off-the beaten path. In the whole scheme of things these 'extras' cost very little to add.

DO you think that ANY of the HVAC trades I had quote on installation thought of any of that? No!! That's because they are looking at just one part of the problem - their own - and they don't look at houses as a system. They do at office building construction, but not at residential - because office buildings have professional construction management and many teams of professional engineers working in-concert.

In residential there's the structural engineer......... and then there's the plumber, electrician, and HVAC guys each doing their own thing because the builder doesn't call the engineer back to vet what those trades are doing......especially plumbers cutting through structural beams to run their pipes. At the cottage I needed a waste pipe to run through a stacked laminated beam because I didn't want to drop the ceiling below by 6". So I got the structural engineer to design a pair of sleeved gusset plates and bolting pattern that would permit the hole for the waste pipe to pass through the laminated beams without creating any structural issues. Total extra cost - $800, but I saved 6" of ceiling height in the room below - which was more than worth it.

There's a full interior fire sprinkler system - not required by code. Why? Because the area is serviced by a volunteer fire department and the earliest possible response time is 15+ minutes in good weather in the event of an emergency. There's also have a portable defibrillator for the same reasons. And a cleared area large enough for a medivac chopper to land in an emergency (no, it's no a licensed chopper pad, but there is a wind sock and lights for night landings). Nothing in code requires any of this, but the cost of adding it was peanuts.

Here's another one......A $3M house was built 3 doors down from me a few years ago. Guess what the plumber did? Ran uninsulated water lines to the 2nd floor laundry area between the exterior sheathing and the batt insulation. There was no insulation protecting these pipes. The insulation contractor didn't care when he installed the batts over the pipes. The builder didn't give a shit about that, nor did he care that the vapour barrier where the pipes entered the laundry was missing. So guess what happened? Burst pipes and mould. Worse than rookie mistakes on the part of the plumber, insulation installer, the builder, and the building inspector.

Cosmetics are another matter - this is where budgets are broken, but not always. Porcelain tile is generally more expensive than glazed tile, but maybe not when you factor in lower installation costs because porcelain tiles are often much bigger and hence lay down faster. And porcelain is the same colour throughout so cut edges don't have to be dressed with Schluyter trim strips to hide raw clay edges. So maybe in some circumstances porcelain tiles are cheaper on an installed basis than glazed.

Some people choose hideous colour schemes, which devalue their homes. Yet the cost of the ugly paint and the cost of pleasing colours is the same - ditto for the application of each. So what exactly is 'going overboard'?

But don't forget about Holmes - lots of the outside material/labour is donated to the show are cost or no-cost in return for the advertising/marketing value it brings the contractor/supplier. So yes, the homeowner is generally getting a better than average install/deal because none of the trades/suppliers are going to want to see their product or workmanship shown on tv in a less than flattering light.