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Average York Region house price nears $1M

York Region north next ‘hot spot’ for sales, realtor says

Yorkregion.com
Oct. 8, 2015
By Lisa Queen

Want to buy a house in York Region?

How deep are your pockets?

At $947,707, the average price of a newly built single-family home is approaching the $1-million mark, according to a regional planning report.

Meanwhile, the average price of all types of resale homes is $766,866, a 14- per-cent increase over 2014, according to the report, which provides an overview of a housing initiatives study being conducted by the GTA Housing Action Lab.

The average price of a detached resale home in the region is $968,790, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board’s September report.

Close to highways, offering great schools, shopping and diverse cultures and still cheaper than Toronto, the region is an attractive location for homebuyers, Vivian Risi, president of Royal LePage Your Community Realty based in Richmond Hill, said.

“The region has the properties they’re looking for, from condos to townhouses to estate living,” said Risi, who has 900 realtors in York Region and 100 in Toronto.

“With Toronto real estate, it’s all about more demand than supply. That’s driving prices up and Toronto’s land transfer tax is higher than in York Region. These issues draw people to York Region.”

These days, homebuyers are looking farther north to buy homes, Risi said.

“York Region north, I believe, is the next hot spot. Builders are busy in places like Georgina and Keswick. Many rural properties are being bought up,” she said.

Unfortunately, if buying a house is too rich for your blood, finding a place to rent won’t be easy.
The region’s 1.5-per-cent vacancy rate is among the lowest in the Greater Toronto Area and is far below a healthy 3 per cent rate that indicates sufficient choice in the market, the planning report said.

“York Region is a robust, healthy and prosperous region but as a prosperous community, it is important to not forget about the need for housing affordability,” the report said.

“The region has an expensive home ownership market, the lowest proportion of rental housing in the Greater Toronto area and a low vacancy rate. (Those) trends are cause for concern and point towards the need for action.”

The average rent for a bachelor apartment in York is $815 a month, compared to $1,036 for a one-bedroom, $1,194 for a two-bedroom and $1,357 for a three-bedroom.

Meanwhile, there are 10,000 households on the region’s waiting list for 7,000 subsidized housing units, with the average wait being 10 years. Moderate and low-income earners, including those on social assistance benefits, have little hope of home ownership here, Mary Ann Proulx, executive director of Citizens for Affordable Housing York Region, said. For them, just affording rent is a struggle. “The situation in York Region, I think we’re in a crisis, to be honest with you,” she said.

Only 15 per cent of housing in York is rental compared to 45 per cent in Toronto, Proulx said.

“We don’t have a lot of purposely built rental units being built. There are some rentals coming in but the rentals that are coming in aren’t keeping up with the pace of (demand),” she said.

“And you can understand why because it’s going to take the owner many, many years to get back his money whereas if they go in and build a whole bunch of houses and flip them and sell them, then they can move on to the next development. When you take a look at building rentals, it takes a long time for the owner to recoup their money.”

With such a dire rental market, landlords can cherry pick the tenants they want, meaning lower-income earners are often forced to take less desirable apartments, Proulx said.

“The middle class is slowly disappearing,” she added. “There are a lot more people moving down. When you talk about low income, middle income and higher income, there are a lot more people moving down because that middle income is slowly disappearing.”

While worries about the lack of affordable housing in the region are long-standing, steps are being taken to address the issue, the report said.

For example, a new 15-storey, 225-unit rental apartment building is being built at 212 Davis Dr. in Newmarket.

The building, by the Rose Corporation, is the first new, privately funded project of its kind to be developed in the region since the 1980s.

Both the region and the town deferred development charges on the building to ease the cost of construction.

In June, the region endorsed affordable housing measuring and monitoring guidelines, which established a clear process for local municipal staff to secure affordable housing commitments through the planning process and for the region to monitor affordable housing targets outlined in the regional official plan.

The region is partnering with the GTA Housing Action Lab to conduct a housing incentives study, which will identify financial, policy and procedural perks to encourage affordable home ownership and rental housing. However, increasing more affordable rental housing is an uphill struggle, the report acknowledged.

In March, the region asked if the development community was interested in partnering with the region to deliver new affordable, mixed-income rental housing.

The region received several responses from developers asking it to waive its development fees and charges.

“Work is now underway to develop a more comprehensive expression of interest package to generate future partnership opportunities with the development community.”

The average price of resale detached houses by municipality in September:

 Source: Toronto Real Estate Board