Condo sales numbers in and around Toronto have taken a drastic tumble so far this year, and now that the market is starting to lean towards buyers ...

Condo sales numbers in and around Toronto have taken a drastic tumble so far this year, and now that the market is starting to lean towards buyers …

  • festus@lemmy.caEnglish
    868·
    2 months ago

    I’m going to be more sympathetic for the developers which is that they likely spent a ton of money for the land already when prices were high and after expensive building costs they’re struggling to not lose money.

    • Kayana@ttrpg.network
      341·
      2 months ago

      On a serious note, they shouldn’t have been so greedy then and waited until prices had fallen again… This looks exactly like the dotcom bubble crashing because investors just couldn’t hold their horses.

      • festus@lemmy.caEnglish
        67·
        2 months ago

        Many condo projects take years to complete. Are you suggesting that years ago, when housing prices reached their peak, condo developers should have stopped development?

        • Kayana@ttrpg.network
          12·
          2 months ago

          That’s a point I didn’t actually think about, touché. Let’s go through this then:

          Before Covid (in my country at least), there was this massive push for more homes, because the interest rates were so low. Everyone was building a house, because it was so very cheap (in interest at least, not necessarily in costs). At that point, wise developers might have decided to not take on any big new projects, focusing on finishing their current ones instead of trying to ride out this bubble.

          Then Covid hit and the supply chains broke down. That was sudden and couldn’t be expected, I’ll give you that. But now, four years later, the main reason (in my opinion) for the low occupancy is the newfound interest for WFH, also resulting from Covid. Who needs an expensive condo in a crowded city if you can have a cheap flat in a small town instead?

          So in this case, I’ll (partially) retract my prior opinion and instead state that while a crash could’ve been seen somewhere on the horizon, Covid with all its consequences certainly couldn’t have been foreseen.

          I’m not familiar with the housing prices in Toronto compared to smaller cities in Canada, but perhaps those developers need to bite the bullet and lower their asking prices, because I’d imagine selling for less is still better than holding onto dead weight, praying for demand to go up again.

    • stoy
      24·
      2 months ago

      Well, they choose to take that risk, that is what an investment is, you buy somethibg that you hope will increase in value, but sometimes you make a bad investment and loose money, that is all part of the game

      • festus@lemmy.caEnglish
        311·
        2 months ago

        Oh I’m not saying they should be bailed out or anything, just that I wouldn’t call developers ‘parasites’ as they actually are building homes.

        • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          2 months ago

          The parasitic part is not the building home part, but the charging you as much as they can part.

          I know, I just described capitalism…

    • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
      182·
      2 months ago

      They spent money to make money off of someone else’s needs.

      They can cry a second Lake Ontario.