Toronto’s Radical Shift in Buying and Selling Habits

1. Staging Is Common When I bough my first place in Leslieville in 2004, staging wasn’t really a thing for most properties. Sure, you tidied up and painted a little, but you didn’t put most of your stuff in storage and bring in a stager. In 2004, you really needed to be wearing your potential goggles as a buyer because few sellers bothered to stage their properties. Only a fraction of houses were staged in 2004. Why so little staging back then? Well, the price points of selling properties simply did not justify the cost of staging. When you are selling a house for $300,000, then it may not be worth the money to stage three bedrooms, a living room, a dining room and a recreation room in the basement. But now, with houses selling over a million, selling a property  has become a real design effort. And that goes beyond the usual painting, to the fix-ups, landscaping, and small renovations. Now, staging is seen as what could up the price by hundreds of  thousands of dollars.
2. No More Upgrading To a New Home Every Five Years Before 2004, the climbing of the property ladder was a thing. People would buy a starter home; maybe a small house or a condo. Five years later, they would trade up. After a few kids they would trade up again. Maybe someone would land a new job or just want to try out another neighbourhood. So, they would trade up. People would change properties way more often than they do today.  Now, people stay in their homes much longer. Some still move with their expanding family needs, and for job re-locations. But for the most part, it’s too expensive to move. The increase in land transfer taxes and the addition of the Toronto Land Transfer Tax in 2010 are largely to blame.

   As an example, let’s take my first house on Rushbrooke. Back in 2004, I would have paid around $2000 in land transfer taxes for that house. Since I was a first-time buyer, I paid $0. Today, based on the estimation of the worth of this semi-detached three bedroom house in Leslieville, I would pay $26,000 in land transfer taxes as a first-time buyer. It would be closer to $32,000 if i was not a first-time buyer.

   With that extra cost, people are more likely to just stay where they are. Growing families now grow their houses, bumping up a story to a bungalow or adding an addition on to the back of the property.
3. Most Starter Homes Are No Longer Houses The starter home for many people today is going to be a condo in central Toronto.  Yes, there will be some exceptions, but for most buyers right now, a house is not an option unless you are out of Toronto in Oshawa, Mississauga or Hamilton. In 2004, even single middle class Torontonians could buy a house. I bought my first one on my own. Nowadays, that would be tough.

I think in 15 years, we will look back at Hamilton and wonder:  “Why didn’t I buy in this insanely cheap city?” I think some may wonder: “Why didn’t I buy near the Eglinton Crossway or another new or planned transit line like the Scarborough Subway before it was finished and rose in value?”

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