When it comes to discussions about the future of real estate, usually, two things are involved: whether prices will inexorably rise until an eventual pricing bubble and how people actually go about making their purchase. The first conversation is as old as real estate itself, a market where values continually rise until suddenly, they don’t.
The second part of today’s real estate discourse is relatively new, as technology has changed homebuying across ages and demographics. Let’s take a deeper look at the future of Canada’s real estate market.
Buying a home is usually the largest purchase a person makes in their lifetime. However, homes in our country’s most populous provinces like Ontario have never cost more. According to the Canadian Real Estate Association, the selling price of homes has skyrocketed by 44% in the two year period between 2020 and the end of 2021.
Will there be a bubble? In other words, will the value of homes abruptly stop rising, drop, or even plummet? “Yes” is a common answer, but the essential thing is pinning down when. The signs of growth could indicate that the market is fundamentally robust, that Ontario has more people moving in than moving out.
You could reasonably look at the market now and say it’s over-inflated and destined to fall like a house of cards. It’s hard to distinguish knowledgeable speculation from shot-in-the-dark predictions.
The one definite thing is that people who purchased their homes in the last year or so have already seen enormous gains in their home’s value. So long as buying a home for x amount of dollars means getting a return of x + y, people will find a way to buy in.
The days of manually searching for a real estate agent are over. New, innovative tech platforms by disrupters like Regan McGee let millennials and savvy tech users of all ages leverage an open digital marketplace to have real estate agents competing on their behalf for better deal flow. These consumer-centric real estate platforms help homebuyers get better rates.
They also make finding and buying a home a much simpler and straightforward process. The transparency that lets users see the commissions and history of the various agents gives them peace of mind in what can otherwise be a very stressful process.
McGee told Toronto Life: “we’ve massively simplified the whole process. People think buying and selling real estate is complicated, but that’s a way for agents to justify their fees.” Tapping into prop tech, short for property tech, is a great way to save money and get a more enjoyable experience buying a home.
If it was easy to speculate about the housing market, everyone would do it. Nobody can say with certainty where prices will go, but the process of homebuying has transformed dramatically with the advent of disruptive tech platforms. Plug into one that caters to your local real estate market and experience the future of real estate today.
Photo: Curtis Adams via Pexels
