The real estate market is falling, but it’s not crashing. And it may bounce back.
Natalia Gomes, a salesperson for Toronto-based Slavens Associates Real Estate, said the media is making the situation more difficult.
“It’s definitely an exaggeration and everybody obviously follows the news and thinks that it’s exactly what’s happening and not necessarily what is actually happening,” Gomes said.
She said there is no special reason for this drop and that it is just a regular trend that happens annually around this time of year.
“It’s a slow market, it’s the winter, usually the market slows down regardless of what’s happening,” she said.
Natalia Gomes is a salesperson for Slavens Associates Real Estate. She said now's a good time to buy real estate as it has softened. Photo credit: Andre Leal
The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) said that in 2023, it expects the average price for a home to drop by 5.9 per cent.
Despite CREA’s predictions for 2023 and beyond, Gomes said that Torontonians shouldn’t get their hopes up about homes being less costly. She also said that the rental market has even gone up a bit.
“While prices in most markets have declined from a short-lived sharp peak in early 2022, they remain well above where they were in the summer of 2020,” the CREA said on its website. The shock of rising interest rates seems to have eased, it said.
For students, this means they are running out of options if they are looking to move out.
Beatriz Spencer, a second-year student at Humber College in the business administration program, said that she has been paying less attention to her future because there aren’t really any realistic options.
“I honestly stopped pretending that I could have my own home in about five years and I’m starting to focus on things that I can handle like my academic performance,” she said.
Spencer said the only realistic option in her eyes is to move with a bunch of friends who can all pitch in for rent, “but you have to rely on those friends to keep up with the rent and you’d have to get along with them well.”
Parents in Toronto can start seeing their kids living with their parents even at 25 years old.
Census data compiled by Statistics Canada found that 35 per cent of young adults aged 20 to 34 live with at least one of their parents.
StatCan said 15 per cent of people in their 20s and early 30s lived with roommates, the fastest growing living arrangement for the age group between 2016 and 2021.
Beatriz’s father, Dr. Fernando Spencer, a surgeon at Shouldice Hospital, said he can’t blame her daughter if she can’t move out within the next three years.
“When I was in university, I knew many people that were moving out at 22, 23 years old,” Spencer said. “Now it’s not so common with the rental market and nothing really changes with the housing market.”
Gomes is bullish about the housing market going back up and insists if people are looking to buy a property, they should act now since the market is down for the moment.
However, those looking to sell their property might have to put a pause.
“If anybody has to sell, unfortunately, they’re not going to sell at the highest price that they would’ve in the spring of last year,” Gomes said.
She said the market should pick up again once spring comes around and sellers can get something closer to what they want for their property.