Durham Market Update

Christopher Hummell: Yes. Wonderful. Thank you. I am Chris Hummel, part of Smart Home choice. You can come meet us in the back over there, at the end or at the next break. We're all realtors as well. Now we service the Durham region and we service the Peterborough area as well.

I'm just gonna go through a quick market update just to give you guys a little taste, because obviously as realtors we're all ears to the ground, but for a lot of times, you guys, you may not have the most accurate, you know, up to date information, right? Here's the deal, right now what are we finding? We're finding buyers are scared. We're finding sellers are scared as well. So what does that mean? So a couple of points. First off, a balanced market.

What does that mean? Listen guys, we're not anywhere near what's called a balanced market. I know you might feel that, but we're not there yet. Four to six months of inventory is what we call a balanced market, and I'll show you guys later, it's right there. We're about 1.6 months of inventory, so believe it or not, as far as the stats go, we are still in a seller's market. All right. Doesn't seem like that just yet or right now, but that's the situation.

Hey guys, we are still seeing multiple offers. Believe it or not. Now we're not seeing 30 offers on a property, but we are still seeing four, five offers and we are still seeing properties selling above ask. Unbelievable. Now, for the most part, I would say most properties are sitting on the market considerably longer, and we'll kind of go through that in a minute.

Okay guys, if you are interested in figuring out where to get the stats, and a lot of the stats that I get come directly from TREB, right? Toronto Real Estate Board. If you really want to be in tune, that's one of the places you go. You go to CMHC, you can go to your own local board here. I guess it's the Halton Region Board.

Ours of course is Durham region, but this is the point. We get all of our stats from here. What's the current market look like right in the GTA? Now, GTA encompasses the greater Toronto, not just here and not just Toronto proper. So I'm talking about GTA. So the average price, almost 1.1 million. And funny enough, it's going up and down.

Everybody thinks it's a fire sale. Not yet. But 1.1 million. So the addition of the change over month to month. Has only been negligible, right? Next month it's gonna be, up or down 4%, 5%. But right now it's negligible. Change year over year, we are down about 5.7%. All right? Again, more or less negligible. Months of inventory 1.6. Now, Oshawa, as I told you guys, we represent Durham Region and all throughout Peterborough. So I'm just gonna talk about Oshawa because it still is GTA, right?

By the way, Oshawa, great place to invest. Why? Because it is the lowest price in all the GTA. All right? Now what do people typically move towards? Everybody gravitates to what? One guy that's it. Yes. Lowests price. All right, fine. So listen, here's the deal. Change, about 5%, year over year, minus 8%. Again, that'll fluctuate. You go, over here, over there, four, five, and months of inventory. Again, 1.4 right months of inventory.
Listen, we still don't have enough inventory. That's the basis here. But what I want to do is I want to point out and highlight what's happening with the rates here. Rates currently are a very scary 5.95%. This is when you go to the bank and they're gonna talk to you about a fixed rate, 5.95% is about what you're gonna get.

All right. As scary as that sounds, I simply wanna point out that if you look at the chart from say, 1940 over the last, I don't know, what is that? 80 years. All right? We are just effectively getting back to normal. Alright? We've been here before, maybe not us, but the market has been here before. All right? With that being said, take a look at this chart. All right.

Listen, guys, we know this. I'm not telling you guys anything you don't already know, but I defy you no matter what the interest rates, say I defy you to buy, to find a house at the same price that you could buy it just before the crash of 1989. Do you think that's possible? I don't either. The long point is this. It's always a good time to be scouting, to be looking to buy. We've got some serious investors in this room who are buying right now.

All right, so if it's a deal, Trust me, there's other guys out there ready to scoop it up. Alright, point is, you gotta keep the gun loaded. Alright? Keep it loaded because there are some great deals out there, and I'm telling you, in 5, 10 years from now, we're all gonna chuckle about this time. Oh, remember that time when prices were a million bucks and interest rate was 6%, right? Because look, you just follow the trend.

Hey, inflation alone is gonna pick your property up. It is what it is. We have no inventory. Trust me right now, this is a great time. In fact, here, look, I'm gonna show you. That was GTA. This is Peterborough and Oshawa. Look, same trend. We've dropped off. But guess what, again, you know, it's a constant trend, right there .I'm not telling you anything you guys don't already know.

Wanted to also get into the rentals real quick. All right. Now this is directly from rentals.ca and some of you guys might be familiar with CMHC. How they tabulate their rentals. I think those numbers are a bit off because they are looking at institutional investors or property owners, and a lot of volunteer information, right? rentals.ca, we know you can go and find actual rentals on this site.

I think their information is a little more accurate. If we look at Toronto, and frankly, I don't know a lot of you guys, I don't know that you're really investing so much so heavily in Burlington, perhaps a little bit west like Hamilton. Look at Hamilton, year over year. Rents up 8.4%. Oshawa again, rents up 12%. Look at, unbelievable. Rents up 27.5%. This is rentals.ca. So these guys, they get all that information live, right?

St. Catherine's, 15.8%. Rents are going up, guys, right? People cannot qualify right now. So what happens? They gravitate to your properties. Again, nothing you guys don't already know. And my last point really is immigration. Over the last number of years. I'm saying covid, there's been a real slow down in immigration for a good reason, but the government is hell bent on kicking that up.

They've just. I think over the last week they have just announced that they will be admitting over 500,000 new immigrants. Typically, they were doing, leading up to the pandemic, they were doing, I think it was 350, 400, 450, something like that. That was the trajectory. But it slowed down. They admitted last year alone about 490 immigrants coming in.

The city proper. The population in Canada has grown over 700,000. All right. Now that's a big number that includes immigrants. That includes a few other things. That includes, non-permanent residents like students. If you guys are in the student rentals, that's cash. Big time. All right. We got a lot of guys that are doing student rentals right now, and frankly, this is one of the big plays outside of what Chris was talking about in the back, with the third units.

Student rentals are a very big play right now as well for cash flow if you guys are looking for cash flow particularly. So the conclusion, the media doom and gloom, right? You turn on the tv, what do you see? You see death, murder, kill. Nobody's talking about that happy story of the young little kitty that crossed the road. Nobody cares, right?

It's all doom, gloom. Keep in mind where your news sources are coming from. Listen, we're still looking at long term growth. As I told you, in 20 years, all of this will be insignificant. Hey guys. Recessions don't last forever. What happens after a recession? Typically you see a good amount, a good long upwards run, right? And we're not there yet, but guess what? We will get there at some point or another.

Immigration is still a strong seller's market still. Guys, again, nothing you don't already. But here's the thing, and this is the big takeaway here. I want you guys to remember, and I think this is effectively one of Chris's points as well, all right? Right now we feel that nobody's buying.
We feel that there's maybe too much on the market, right? As I told you guys, today is a great time to still be looking. But here's the point. There are too many options and too many options. Causes paralysis, analysis, paralysis. Look at just a few months ago. Nothing on the market.

Everybody's jumping in, man, houses are selling. How fast, blink of an eye now, real slow. Okay? Because at the time there were no other options. You had one, two properties, you bid on them. Now we have too many options, but nobody's buying. Unreal. So again, too many options. That's, by the way, a great read. Alright, the paradox of choice, and it goes through all of this. Listen, I can't even go to Home Depot trying to get a tube of caulking, right? There's like 50 caulkings out there. The point is don't get caught up by too much choice and your analysis paralysis. All right guys that's it.