I’ve said many times before that the real estate market is an imperfect one. Participants lack access to a lot of valuable information and there’s a significant amount of friction between buyers and sellers.
A perfect example of this can be found in this recent Toronto Star article, which is suggesting (at least in the headline) that only about 23% of Toronto’s condos are owned and rented out by investors. The article is reporting on the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s annual publication called the Canadian Housing Observer.
Of course, to come up with this number, CMHC is only reporting on data held by the MLS. It does not include units that may have been rented out via Craigslist, Kijiji, social media, a billboard in the lobby, or some other means. And I would argue that the rental side of the marketplace has a much stronger tendency to go outside of MLS as compared to sales.