As we know -- because here's the data -- this is the current state of affairs:
The GTA condo market is in a state of economic lockdown. The math doesn’t make economic sense from both the demand side (investors) and the supply side (developers), leaving the market at a standstill.
The above excerpt is from a recent CIBC Capital Markets article by Benjamin Tal (CIBC) and Shawn Hildebrant (Urbanation). And what it ultimately means is that the supply of new condominiums in the GTA is falling and will continue to fall for the foreseeable future. Below are two charts, from the same article, that show that.
Because of this, I actually think that, if you need or want a place to live, right now is a near ideal time to buy a condominium, especially if it's from developer inventory (in an already completed project) or it's a resale. Of course, most people won't want to do this because they'd rather buy when most other people in the market want to buy. This is how markets tend to go.
It has been a while since the GTA has gone through one of these real estate cycles, but it is typical: developers are prone to both over-building and under-building. It simply takes too long to build a building, and so it is natural for there to be moments when supply and demand don't exactly line up.
Pre-selling condominiums is -- in theory only -- supposed to protect against too much overbuilding. But as we have spoken about many times before, it can be challenging for end users to buy a new home so far in advance. And so the new condominium market has come to rely on investors who want to buy early and then either sell later or rent later.
According to the above article (and MLS data), the share of newly completed condominiums used as rentals reached a peak of 34% in 2023. So a third of new condos. My gut tells me that the actual number is much higher. Many rentals never reach MLS. Overall, I think it's very safe to assume that the majority of new condominiums are owned by investors.
But right now, fewer investors want to own condominiums, which is why the number of resale listings has spiked this year:
This is, again, why I think right now is an excellent time to buy a condo. You know, be greedy when others... Regardless, this inventory will need to get absorbed and that will ultimately happen. Some of it will go to end users and some of it will go to investors who can make sense of the rental math and/or want to take a long view on Toronto. But if more goes to the former, we will be losing a lot of new rental housing.
At the same time, while all of this is going on, construction starts are likely going to remain depressed (chart 3 above). It's impossible to know how long this lasts, but at some point we will reach a moment in the cycle where we are under-building new housing. Maybe we're already there. Development simply can't turn on fast enough when demand spikes. There will almost always be a lag.
So, since the majority of new condominiums have been serving as new rental housing, there's a strong case to be made that at some point we will run into a potentially severe shortage of rentals. Condo investors are sometimes vilified in the media, but we will soon find out what happens when you take a big chunk of them out of the housing market.
As of November 2023, it was estimated that there were 988,000 homes under construction in multi-family buildings containing 5 or more units. This is in comparison to 680,000 single-family homes, according to US Census data. (Looking at the below graph, it's also interesting to see how the supply of single-family homes dropped off after the global financial crisis and multi-family apartments took off.)
All of this means that in 2024, the US is on track to complete more apartments than it has in many many decades. In fact, exactly similar to what
One argument that you might be able to make is that home prices follow urban density. New York City, for example, is dense. And homes in New York City tend to be more expensive than those in, oh I don't know, rural Canada. So with this, you might conclude that development and density are bad -- it makes housing more expensive. But then there's places like San Jose, California. It's not very dense, and yet it has some of if not the most expensive housing in the US.
Well, it turns out that housing density and median housing values don't actually exhibit a particularly strong correlation. A better and much stronger relationship can be found in what Kasey Klimes explains, here, in this excellent post, which is that home prices more accurately follow incomes. In other words, the more high paying jobs that exist in a market, the more likely that housing will be expensive.
Here is what that looks like for US metros over 1 million people:
The above chart compares median home value to aggregate income per unit of housing. And here, Kasey discovers an r-value of 0.9, which suggests that "over 81% of median home values in large metros can be attributed to aggregate income per unit of housing." This explains why San Jose, and San Francisco, are such outliers. They have very high incomes for every unit of available housing, despite the former being not all that dense.
Okay, so now that we know this, how do we make housing more affordable? One option is to just make people poorer. If you reduce incomes per unit of housing, then home prices will, almost certainly, go down. And this is why poorer cities tend to have more affordable housing. But this is obviously suboptimal. The better option is to keep people wealthy and simply increase the denominator in "aggregate income per unit of housing."
Meaning: build more housing!
Chart: Kasey Klimes
As we know -- because here's the data -- this is the current state of affairs:
The GTA condo market is in a state of economic lockdown. The math doesn’t make economic sense from both the demand side (investors) and the supply side (developers), leaving the market at a standstill.
The above excerpt is from a recent CIBC Capital Markets article by Benjamin Tal (CIBC) and Shawn Hildebrant (Urbanation). And what it ultimately means is that the supply of new condominiums in the GTA is falling and will continue to fall for the foreseeable future. Below are two charts, from the same article, that show that.
Because of this, I actually think that, if you need or want a place to live, right now is a near ideal time to buy a condominium, especially if it's from developer inventory (in an already completed project) or it's a resale. Of course, most people won't want to do this because they'd rather buy when most other people in the market want to buy. This is how markets tend to go.
It has been a while since the GTA has gone through one of these real estate cycles, but it is typical: developers are prone to both over-building and under-building. It simply takes too long to build a building, and so it is natural for there to be moments when supply and demand don't exactly line up.
Pre-selling condominiums is -- in theory only -- supposed to protect against too much overbuilding. But as we have spoken about many times before, it can be challenging for end users to buy a new home so far in advance. And so the new condominium market has come to rely on investors who want to buy early and then either sell later or rent later.
According to the above article (and MLS data), the share of newly completed condominiums used as rentals reached a peak of 34% in 2023. So a third of new condos. My gut tells me that the actual number is much higher. Many rentals never reach MLS. Overall, I think it's very safe to assume that the majority of new condominiums are owned by investors.
But right now, fewer investors want to own condominiums, which is why the number of resale listings has spiked this year:
This is, again, why I think right now is an excellent time to buy a condo. You know, be greedy when others... Regardless, this inventory will need to get absorbed and that will ultimately happen. Some of it will go to end users and some of it will go to investors who can make sense of the rental math and/or want to take a long view on Toronto. But if more goes to the former, we will be losing a lot of new rental housing.
At the same time, while all of this is going on, construction starts are likely going to remain depressed (chart 3 above). It's impossible to know how long this lasts, but at some point we will reach a moment in the cycle where we are under-building new housing. Maybe we're already there. Development simply can't turn on fast enough when demand spikes. There will almost always be a lag.
So, since the majority of new condominiums have been serving as new rental housing, there's a strong case to be made that at some point we will run into a potentially severe shortage of rentals. Condo investors are sometimes vilified in the media, but we will soon find out what happens when you take a big chunk of them out of the housing market.
As of November 2023, it was estimated that there were 988,000 homes under construction in multi-family buildings containing 5 or more units. This is in comparison to 680,000 single-family homes, according to US Census data. (Looking at the below graph, it's also interesting to see how the supply of single-family homes dropped off after the global financial crisis and multi-family apartments took off.)
All of this means that in 2024, the US is on track to complete more apartments than it has in many many decades. In fact, exactly similar to what
One argument that you might be able to make is that home prices follow urban density. New York City, for example, is dense. And homes in New York City tend to be more expensive than those in, oh I don't know, rural Canada. So with this, you might conclude that development and density are bad -- it makes housing more expensive. But then there's places like San Jose, California. It's not very dense, and yet it has some of if not the most expensive housing in the US.
Well, it turns out that housing density and median housing values don't actually exhibit a particularly strong correlation. A better and much stronger relationship can be found in what Kasey Klimes explains, here, in this excellent post, which is that home prices more accurately follow incomes. In other words, the more high paying jobs that exist in a market, the more likely that housing will be expensive.
Here is what that looks like for US metros over 1 million people:
The above chart compares median home value to aggregate income per unit of housing. And here, Kasey discovers an r-value of 0.9, which suggests that "over 81% of median home values in large metros can be attributed to aggregate income per unit of housing." This explains why San Jose, and San Francisco, are such outliers. They have very high incomes for every unit of available housing, despite the former being not all that dense.
Okay, so now that we know this, how do we make housing more affordable? One option is to just make people poorer. If you reduce incomes per unit of housing, then home prices will, almost certainly, go down. And this is why poorer cities tend to have more affordable housing. But this is obviously suboptimal. The better option is to keep people wealthy and simply increase the denominator in "aggregate income per unit of housing."
Meaning: build more housing!
Chart: Kasey Klimes
Still, all of this new supply is having an impact. Apartment List recently published its national rent report, over here. And overall, it found that:
Rent increases are currently being moderated by a robust construction pipeline expected to deliver a decades-high number of new apartment units in 2024.
More specifically, they found that the cities with the most supply are now seeing the largest rent declines:
Many of the steepest year-over-year declines remain concentrated in Sun Belt cities that are rapidly expanding their multifamily inventory, such as Austin (-7.4 percent year-over-year), Raleigh (-4.4 percent), and Orlando (-3.9 percent).
If you're an apartment developer, this is not what you want to see. It means that increased competition is creating downward pressure on rents and that vacancy rates are probably rising. But if you're someone looking to rent an apartment, this is exactly what you want to see. You want more affordable housing. And so, as a consequence, you want more homes to be built. Because when supply outstrips demand, this is what you get.
Charts: Apartment List
Still, all of this new supply is having an impact. Apartment List recently published its national rent report, over here. And overall, it found that:
Rent increases are currently being moderated by a robust construction pipeline expected to deliver a decades-high number of new apartment units in 2024.
More specifically, they found that the cities with the most supply are now seeing the largest rent declines:
Many of the steepest year-over-year declines remain concentrated in Sun Belt cities that are rapidly expanding their multifamily inventory, such as Austin (-7.4 percent year-over-year), Raleigh (-4.4 percent), and Orlando (-3.9 percent).
If you're an apartment developer, this is not what you want to see. It means that increased competition is creating downward pressure on rents and that vacancy rates are probably rising. But if you're someone looking to rent an apartment, this is exactly what you want to see. You want more affordable housing. And so, as a consequence, you want more homes to be built. Because when supply outstrips demand, this is what you get.
Charts: Apartment List
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