This came amid consistent home price and rental rate growth in the market
In Toronto, housing activity brought about by residents changing addresses has significantly declined over the decade ending 2016.
From 2006 to 2016, address changes have fallen by a notable 6.3%, the Ryerson University Centre for Urban Research and Land Development noted in its analysis of Census data.
This decline in mobility is especially significant, as the next largest drops were considerably below Toronto’s levels. Calgary suffered a 5.7% shrinkage, while Vancouver saw 3.8% less moves, followed by Ottawa, Montreal, and Edmonton.
More home owners have also decided to stay put: Among those in the Toronto area, moves fell by 7.6 % during that 10-year period. This is in comparison to the 3.9% reduction in moves among tenants.
A significant motivating factor in the trend is low availability in the detached, semi-detached, and townhouse segments, analysis co-author Frank Clayton explained.
“In the last decade compared with the early 2000s we were building a lot more low-density housing, particularly single-detached housing. In 2002 we built 22,000 units and in 2016, the peak in the last 10 years, we built 11,000 units,” Clayton told the Toronto Star.
The latest edition of the Teranet-National Bank of Canada House Price Index showed that Toronto’s residential price growth in June represented almost half of the market’s total increase so far this year.
Last month, Toronto home prices ticked up by 1.33% from May, and rose by 2.81% from June 2018.
However, Better Dwelling noted in its analysis that this constituted the third smallest reading for annual increase for the month of June. In particular, the June 2019 figure was 2.13% below the all-time high seen in July 2017.
