Condo developer plans to buy $1-billion worth of single-family houses in Canada for rentals

[Northern Light]

I'm just using the G&M article headline for the thread title.

I'm not sure this article merits its own thread, but couldn't think of an existing thread where it fit.

Story is about a developer, CORE, shifting into buying up single-family homes as rental properties.

Apparently this a material investment category in the U.S. but relatively new to Canada.

Article link below, not paywalled at time of posting.

Condo developer plans to buy $1-billion worth of single-family houses in Canada for rentals

Toronto company is betting an investment concept that has already proven lucrative in the U.S. will also be successful north of the border

www.theglobeandmail.com

 

[rbt]

That makes a lot of sense for a cash-rich developer. Buy houses that can be cash-flow positive in areas which may be potentially rezoned, lease them for 20 years slowly doing land assembly (without paying as much of a premium due to urgency), then redevelop. Reminds me a bit of office REITs running parking lots.

I'm constantly amazed at how many houses in Rosedale and Forest Hill will reliably lease for $15k/month.

 

[WislaHD]

Some discussion on this was posted in the Housing Bubble thread

 

[slickpete83]

remember the good old days , where if you wanted to rent you would move into a tall rental building , and if you wanted to buy you would buy a simple house and nobody had to live in basements but pool tables , bars , sofas and rec room tv's lol...
dam government and red tape , should put big tax incentives on building more rental buildings
I'm sure developers will take of advantage of new laneway homes & garden suites laws

 

[Jonny5]

remember the good old days , where if you wanted to rent you would move into a tall rental building , and if you wanted to buy you would buy a simple house and nobody had to live in basements but pool tables , bars , sofas and rec room tv's lol...
dam government and red tape , should put big tax incentives on building more rental buildings
I'm sure developers will take of advantage of new laneway homes & garden suites laws

I was born in the 80's, so by the time I came of age the tower stock had improved and expanded significantly, but there were many who would choose a basement over those slab towers back then. There were basement apartments in Toronto as far back as I can remember, even in the 80's. The one big difference is that most were of those rentals were unregulated, done with handshake agreements and cash payments, which was the attraction for renters because they were cheaper due to the implied lack of any income reporting by the owner to the CRA. The demographic mix may have been different back then, with more rented to students going to UofT, Ryerson, etc. and single workers on low incomes, though really poor people back then lived in rooming houses which were far more common across downtown back then; I think there were hundreds back in the 80's until the City had a huge crackdown on them in the 90's.