Faced with no more long weekends until the December holidays, it’s time to roll up the sleeves and seize the opportunities of this fall real estate season. Across most communities and price points, it’s clear that we are experiencing a nice bounce and are likely to finish the year on a high note.

Over the last few weeks, 40-50% of condo sales have been transacting at or above the asking price, indicating that buyers are holding back from getting involved in bidding wars, while the condo market remains strong overall. To get a stronger picture of real estate this fall and into the new year, we spoke with the Canadian Real Estate Association‘s Chief Economist, Gregory Klump.

Over the last year, a new service has emerged in the ever-evolving world of digital real estate. It’s called an iBuyer or “iBuying.”

An iBuyer is an instant offer real estate business model whereby a seller can immediately sell their house or condo and leave the headaches and hassles of closing to the iBuyer service.

Sounds great from a time and energy point of view, but what about the cost? What about commission? In most cases, all sellers would like an instant offer on their house or condo for sale. While it’s a great and convenient concept, the problem with the model is that it’s far from cheap.

Ten York is a 65-storey Tridel condo development in downtown Toronto on a sliver of land between Harbour Street and York Street. The building has roughly 700 units. Before you even get to the fancy digital smart-home stuff, this building stands out for it’s spirited use of what could easily have been a throw-away plot of land. Look at that!

The heart of Ten York is called Tridel Connect. It’s the birth-child of Tridel’s collaboration with real estate technology company SmartONE Solutions. They have brought cutting-edge technology from South Korea to create the most advanced smart-community tech in Canada to date.

With the opening of The One by Mizrahi last year, the precedent for super-tall condo buildings was set and the pinnacle was reached (so far) for this kind of grandiose design. At 85 storeys, The One will be the tallest residential building in Canada. Looking across Toronto’s skyline, you’ll see several other buildings with similarly impressive floor numbers such as One Bloor (75 storeys), Aura at College Park (55 storeys), and that’s just the start of new developments going up and up. With this trend on the rise, it’s an interesting time to examine the real investment value of buying on a higher floor.

Labour Day has passed and for some that means the summer has ended. Vacation time is wrapping up, students are heading back to school, and the real estate world will be shifting into its fall season. The summer had a slow start, but sales were up year-over-year in July and the prices of condos in Toronto continued to climb. Looking ahead, what can we expect this fall?

Based on what we’ve seen this summer, we are expecting the fall real estate season to perform similarly to 2017, with slower activity than 2016.* Looking at the current market absorption rates for Toronto condos in separate price groups, we can see that larger units (two and three-bedroom condos) are taking longer to sell on average, with market absorption rates in the range of 50 to 140 days. Anything under 120 days should be considered a strong Seller’s Market.

At the end of August, The Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear an appeal from the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB), who wanted to prevent brokerages from publishing real estate sold price data online. The court’s decision was a big win for the freedom of information, innovation in the real estate industry, and for buyers and sellers like you. But now that the data is available, how do you use price history data in your search?