property rental market stabilizing recently ?

 When last we met, the topic was condos, and the narrative going on all around was: City of Toronto – North America’s Condo King. The ongoing issue is when the Condo King Kong is going to fall off the building. A few months later, the story is much the same, but less so. Toronto is still constructing more condominiums than any city in North America, but we are starting to see the effects of a managed leak in the real estate bubble that gave Toronto that distinction.

The synopsis at the end of 2012:

Home sales are falling; the Feds are behind it; Toronto has not got the word (and continues to sprout big, beautiful icicles pointing skyward); there’re too many people here now. It’s easy to find headlines that suggest that the Toronto condo boom is showing no signs of waning; real estate prices are increasing (albeit at a slower rate) and new developments are still being, uh, developed. The following headlines unfold the drama of North America’s condo king:

So, perhaps it’s now not so much “when will the sky fall” as much as when will the Kong fall off? How can the center of the “fourth fastest growing area in North America” handle an explosion of its urban population, without responding in kind to the level of tenancy deposit compensation claims ?It remains to be seen how Toronto – which in the 1960s was praised for its progressive urban planning – can safely expand into the-city-it-always-wanted-to-be. What started years ago as a plan to increase urban density and tax dollars into the city’s core has become something much larger, involving forces on a scale that even Jane Jacobs would find hard to corral.

Trends to watch include other urban areas competing for foreign dollars such as Seattle’s luxury market which is picking up speed, the approaching fiscal cliff in the US, and whether China will continue it’s foreign purchases post leadership transition.