June 25, 2008
Canadian realtors forced to ‘be cops’
New Canadian laws went into effect Monday forcing Realtors to gather background client information to battle terror-funding and money laundering. Realtors must now ask for the name, address, date of birth and occupation of property buyers and sellers, plus ID such as a driver’s license or passport before proceeding with a sale or purchase.
The information must be retained for seven years and provided to the Financial Transaction and Reports Analysis Center of Canada on request. “We know there is going to be consumer rejection on this and we are just following the law,” said Gerry Weir, president of the Ontario Real Estate Association. He said if a client refuses to disclose the information, the Realtor must abandon the deal or report the person to FINTRAC.
In Toronto, 17-year veteran Realtor Valerie Chrysdale of The Sutton Group-Bayview agency told UPI by telephone she wasn’t happy with the new responsibilities. “The number of forms we have to fill out is just crazy,” she said. “They’re putting us in a position of being cops and we don’t want to be doing that.”
June 25, 2008
U.S. Real Estate Prices at 2004 Levels
“We’ve erased the last four years of gains.”
The American real estate market has dropped to pre-boom 2004 levels, a closely watched housing index shows. The 20-city S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for April was 169.85, compared with 167.43 in August 2004, evaporating the appreciation homebuyers saw in the past four years.
“We’ve erased the last four years of gains,” a vice president of index analysis at Standard & Poor’s, Maureen Maitland, said. “Home prices are still falling, and the pace of the decline does not seem to be abating.”
Nationwide, the 20 major American cities in the index, which tracks the sale of single-family homes monthly, declined a record 15.3%, with 13 cities reaching all-time lows. In New York, home prices dropped 1.3% in April from the month earlier period, and more than 8% year over year.
In a separate report released yesterday, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, which looks at lower-priced homes that have government-backed mortgages, said prices across the country fell 0.8% in April compared with March, and 4.6% year over year, reaching December 2005 levels. The two reports measure home prices differently, an economist at Global Insight, Patrick Newport, said. “The truth is somewhere in between the two,” he said. Both are “telling a consistent story that prices are dropping nationally.”
“Prices are probably going to drop quite a bit more because there’s so much inventory out there,” Mr. Newport added.
For the first time this year, every city measured in the S&P/Case-Shiller index saw a year-on-year drop. Charlotte, N.C., which had been the only city in the survey to post annual growth the other months this year, saw an annual price decline of 0.1%. In 10 of the cities in the index, annual declines were in the double digits, while seven cities posted drops of 20% or more.
The index does not measure condominium or co-op sales, so few Manhattan homes are reflected in the number, although it does include single-family homes in the other boroughs.
“We by our makeup are different from every other market in the country,” the chief economist at the real estate firm Terra Holdings, Gregory Heym, said. “Prices in Manhattan have yet to significantly fall.”
Mr. Heym said he does not expect any “dramatic changes” in the second-quarter data, to be released next week.
The cities with the largest decline in the index are Las Vegas, with an annual decline of 26.8%, and Miami, with a drop of 26.7%. Chicago, Cleveland, and Denver, while still posting declines, showed some improvement in annual figures from last month, indicating that price drops in those markets may be slowing.
May 22, 2008
House sales continue slide
Home resales in Toronto continue to drop - but prices are still going up.
Resale housing activity across the Greater Toronto Area for the first half of May is showing signs of increased weakening.
Sales are down 12 per cent across the GTA compared to the same time last year.
Existing house sales in the GTA went down by 7 per cent in April, as compared to the same month a year ago.
In Toronto, sales plummeted 15 per cent in the first two weeks of May.
That has led to an increased inventory of homes for sale.
The good news, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board, is that there is more choice for home buyers.
The typical home now is on the market an average of 35 days, as opposed to 28 dqays a year ago.
However, the slower activity is not reflected in the prices.
Home values are still rising, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board.
Prices across the GTA averaged $400,817, up six per cent from a year ago.
In Toronto, prices were up six per cent to $437,205.
And although sales are softening, there are still pockets that enjoyed a heightened activity during the first half of the month.
The Annex saw transactions climb 39 per cent.
The Danforth area saw sales spike 29 per cent.
And Streetsville, in Mississauga, saw a five per cent increase in the price of detached homes, the board reported today.