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Are we living in the greatest construction boom in Toronto history?

denfromoakvillemilton said:
demand in real estate downtown. people are tired of 1.5 hour commutes. People want to be around the action. Thus demand.
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this.
population wise, GTA's growth is not that impressive at all. It is more about people wanting to move closer to the core now instead of living in their 5 bedroom mansion 50 miles from work wasting 4 hours staring at other cars every day.
 
detroitbootybass said:
Population growth is a factor in the downtown area, but extremely low interest rates provide the means for the prospectors in the construction gold rush.
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low interest rate is worldwide, not exclusive to Canada. Japan had zero interest for decades and didn't see much property boom. I think it is driven by

1) people moving form suburbs to central city (because TTC is so great).
2) overseas investors (China, middle east mostly).
3) low interest rate makes housing owning more feasible.

Many American cities are seeing a boom to. Price in Boston, Bay area etc are all rising fast. They are not constructing as many probably because more strict land supply and approval.

ehlow said:
Well you do have lots of apartment buildings in the suburbs like Dixon rd or near fairview mall, and lots of houses near downtown like the annex or cabbagetown. I guess that counts as midtown?
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Apartments near Fairview are actually quite cheap. You can have a 1000sf two bedroom for under $1500 a month.
The Annex and Cabbagetown are much closer to downtown (almost walking distance to the CBD), not sure there is a lot of rental supply and the price won't be that cheap.
 
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^I don't disagree. However, population growth seems to be in decline in the region, probably because job growth has failed to keep up with population increase. At some point something has to give and you can see it is by our unimpressive employment statistics. Our city either has to pick up the pace in terms of job creation or this building boom will soon run out of steam.
 
TrickyRicky said:
^I don't disagree. However, population growth seems to be in decline in the region, probably because job growth has failed to keep up with population increase. At some point something has to give and you can see it is by our unimpressive employment statistics. Our city either has to pick up the pace in terms of job creation or this building boom will soon run out of steam.
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Employment was hard hit in the recessions of 1989 and 2008 but employment is growing in the city. It's now at an all time high, passing the numbers of the late 80s. Employment is increasingly concentrated downtown, following the demand of people wanting to live an urban lifestyle. Manufacturing has declined but even that sector is stabilizing.

This real estate boom isn't really a change in growth at all. Before the last 15 years or so, almost all of that growth was new houses in the suburbs and tower-in-the-park style apartments, also in the suburbs. Now a higher percentage is high rise housing downtown and in centres like North York, which is far more visible and juicy for the media to report on. The growth isn't unprecedented by any means, it's just a different kind of growth from what we're used to. As long as there's an appetite for urban living, high rise development will continue even if overall growth slows down.
 
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MisterF, certainly most of what you say is true but I'm talking about on a regional basis. Central Toronto is a bubble of development, job creation, and population growth. However, if you look at the overall picture the GTA has been loosing steam from a national perspective. This is not a put down as the GTA has done much of the heavy lifting nationally for decades. Look at the just released Labour survey statistics from Statscan. I don't know how much faith to put in them because they get so heavily revised but they show that the Toronto labour market is basically the worst in the country right now. Population growth is also slowing every year.

-Net population increase: 91,000 August 2013 to August 2014
-Net Jobs created: -44,000

For the record Montreal lost -18,000 jobs, Vancouver gained 37,000 jobs, Calgary gained 22,000 jobs.

This is not a city versus city argument (For instance Vancouver had a terrible job market last year and Alberta is one of the fastest deteriorating job markets at the moment). I just want to contextualize the boom and speculate about it's sustainability. My point: While central Toronto is booming and the towers are climbing high, the Toronto region is NOT booming, we need to step things up if we want to sustain development momentum.
 
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Just wondering where those numbers are from? What I'm finding online is saying that Toronto CMA employment grew by 120,000 last year. The unemployment rate will come down as the economy continues to recover.

In any case, what I'm saying is that growth is becoming more centralized, which is probably the biggest factor in the high rise boom. Because of that, even if growth slows there will always be high rise construction to meet the demand.
 
ksun said:
low interest rate is worldwide, not exclusive to Canada. Japan had zero interest for decades and didn't see much property boom.
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Depends on what you mean by property boom... There is tons of new construction in Tokyo. Inner Tokyo will apparently have over 100k housing starts per year, while 30-40k is more common in the GTA. If you just scale up the GTA's numbers to match the special wards' population, it would be 45-60k housing starts, so significantly less than Tokyo.

Tokyo doesn't see the price growth Toronto does, probably in part because it has so much new construction.
 
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