Also, as mentioned before, in my area, foreign speculators are pretty much a non-issue on the residential side. There are basically no foreign bidders in detached home sales in the area. I won't deny it's an issue in some areas (eg. Willowdale), but location is an important factor. I suspect that is why there is so much disagreement amongst real estate agents about the impact of foreign speculators, because each region is different. Ironically, on the commercial side, some of the malls are foreign owned. They bought up uber cheap strip malls back like 30 years ago and put very little money into them. They keep them presentable enough to lease out and then just sat on them. They get lease income to cover their expenses and then some, but also waited for rezoning from commercial to mixed-use residential/retail before selling. And now they are selling to condo developers for huge profits. Those are the foreign speculators in my area, but they have nothing to do with the traditional residential market.
This is a very interesting point, and is also something that I've had a gut feeling about myself for a while (based only on empirical observations.) The speculation/flipping or the 'owned-but-vacant house' phenomenon just doesn't exist in some 'hoods.
To use a particular neighbourhood that I'm very familiar with as an example, there's a small community off of Greenwood Avenue North of Gerrard that one enters through Torbrick Road. "Old Riverdale", it calls itself.
I've watched this neighbourhood go from being half decent with a few minor dents and cracks 15-20 years ago to becoming a fully decent place over the years. There are tastefully groomed front and back yards with shiny luxury cars popping up on drive ways. Many of the observable people coming in over the years tend to be young to early-middle aged families with adults heading to work dressed in such a way that implies white-collar professions.
I believe prices have been in the $700k-750k range in the past year or so. Back in the early 2000's, these were going for under $300k!
If one can overlook the fact that the houses are all semis, the area is fantastic for families with most of the houses having 3-4 bedrooms.
It seems to me that this area has been averse to speculation, flipping or squatting. For now, perhaps.
In comparison, going further up Greenwood to just north of Danforth where it used to be that the majority of houses were tiny detached bungalows on large lots - there appears to have been many full teardown/rebuilds (of the stucco variety, I might add.) Was there speculation/flipping activity here? My gut says 'yes.'
At the end of the day, I'm sure it is end-users who are buying and moving into these houses just as much as it is in Old Riverdale - just with an added presence of flippers in the past. However, I still wouldn't think that there are property squatters here. I have also not observed much "foreign speculator" presence here.
Then again, I'm not exactly patrolling the streets every day on the lookout for these things.
So what are the factors about certain areas that attract more speculators? In the Old Riverdale case, maybe it's the fact that price appreciation of semis are generally slower than fully detached homes, but there must be more to it, no?
