Olivia D’Orazio
Other
Regardless of the doomsayers pointing to low oil values and potential market overvaluation, the luxury real estate market in Canada is not suffering, and Sotheby’s International doesn’t think it will in 2015.
The high-end brokerage released its semi-annual Top-Tier Report today, revealing the strong growth across Canada’s four major centres: in Toronto and Vancouver, sales were up 38 per cent and 25 per cent, year over year.
“Heightened demand and tight inventory contributed to declines in the number of days on market and notable increases in the percentage of homes sold over asking in both markets,” Sotheby’s said in the report.
Calgary and Montreal also realized strong sales growth – 16 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively. Sotheby’s said political stability contributed to gains in the Quebec city, while uncertainty surrounding oil prices had little effect on the Calgary market.
“With historically low mortgage lending rates, a solid Canadian economy and an ongoing flow immigration, migration and foreign investment into the country’s major metropolitan cities, all four urban real estate markets enter 2015 from a position of stability,” Sotheby’s said.
Migration certainly played a large role in Canada’s luxury market in 2014, and front-line agents believe that will continue to be the case.
“There are more people entering the market, locally as well as internationally,” Fran Bennett, a Sotheby’s agent in Toronto, tells REP. “The amount of immigration coming into Toronto, for one thing [will drive the luxury market in 2015]. It’s not just foreign investors, but people moving from one coast to another coast in Canada.
“All signs are pointing to the pace of the market will continue, certainly into the spring of 2015. We don’t see any slowdown. We were so short of properties and there’s such a demand. And in the city of Toronto, that’s not going to change any time soon.”
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