Real-estate rules aim to ‘calm, not kill’ market
Premier expresses confidence in changes before leaving for meeting with U.S. governors
Changes to Toronto-area real-estate rules were meant to “calm . . . not kill” the market, Premier Kathleen Wynne says, adding the province will continue to keep an eye on their impact.
“We’re monitoring it closely,” said Wynne, speaking to reporters at Queen’s Park. “It was a sophisticated response to an overheating of the market and we’ll see, over the coming months, what the impact has been.
“I’m pretty confident that the range of things that we put in place is having the desired effect and will continue to.”
While housing sales in the Toronto area remain up year over year, they have declined month-to-month since Wynne introduced new housing policies April 20, including a 15per-cent tax on foreign buyers and an expansion of rent controls.
The real estate industry has urged the province and other levels of government to wait for an extensive period before intervening any further.
“Let’s hit the brakes here,” said Tim Hudak, CEO of the Ontario Real Estate Association and former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. “Let’s take a wait-and-see approach before any more demand interventions.”
Toronto realtor David Fleming believes the housing market was already correcting itself before the government changes.
“This is a market that likely would have cooled itself,” Fleming of Bosley Real Estate said. “What they’ve done effectively is just fast-tracked what would have been a natural cooling.” Wynne spoke to reporters at Queen’s Park on Thursday morning before heading to Rhode Island to meet with U.S. governors to talk trade and promote cross-border economic ties at a national conference.
She called the meeting “a really important moment for Ontario, in the context of Canadian-American relations.”
“The trade relationships between Canada and the United States, and Ontario and the United States, is critical to the well-being of both jurisdictions,” said Wynne, who was to be joined in Rhode Island by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
While the pressure of protectionism is a concern — “we don’t know exactly where that protectionist sentiment is going to lead to” — Wynne said there is “some urgency, (as) we know that sometime in the next week or so there will be more clarity in what the mandate for the renegotiation of NAFTA will look like.”
About 28 states in the U.S. list Ontario as their first- or second-place export market. Meanwhile, just-released results from the first quarter of this year showed Ontario’s economic growth bested the rest of Canada, the U.S. and G7 countries.