Toronto Income Property Newsletter – December 2013

 Happy Holidays.  I’d like to wish you and your family a very safe and enjoyable Christmas season. I’d also like to especially thank again all of our clients who bought properties with us this year.  Thanks for your patience in this competitive market (most of you had to write a lot of offers along the way) and for your confidence in Plex Realty. We really appreciate the business and hope that you will recommend us to all of your friends.

 *

 Were there really less income properties for sale this year?

If you are a regular reader of my monthly newsletter, then you would have noticed me commenting that we could have used more income properties for sale in the downtown Toronto core. This year in particular it seemed to me like not as many duplexes and triplexes came up for sale as in previous years.  As we come to the end of this calendar year, I decided to do a bit of research and see if this actually true.

Here is the number of MLS sales of 3+ kitchen properties in five key Toronto neighbourhoods over the past three years. Each of these would be areas that we highly recommend to investors and live-in clients.

Downtown Toronto (west of Yonge Street south of Bloor)

2011: 69

2012: 52

2013 (YTD): 41

 

Riverdale & Leslieville

2011: 32

2012: 28

2013 (YTD): 11

 

High Park North & Bloor West Village

2011: 23

2012: 23

2013 (YTD): 11

 

The Annex

2011: 15

2012: 17

2013 (YTD): 12

 

The Beaches

2011: 13

2012: 15

2013 (YTD): 6

 

So there you have it.  While TREB stats show that the numbers of overall sales are slightly down this year, sales of income properties are way down.  In all of the above areas, 2013 had fewer income properties for sale than the two prior years. Note how close 2011 and 2012 were for this inventory.  I’m happy that it wasn’t just my imagination. It just didn’t seem like I saw as many multiplexes for sale as I have in previous years. My guess is that more and more landlords are opting to keep their properties rather than cashing in for a short-term gain.  That’s the beauty of passive income through real estate – the longer you hang on, the greater your ultimate return.  Let’s hope 2014 brings us more inventory, ideally back up to the levels we saw a few years ago.