Smart-Home Tech Developers Embrace New Connectivity Standard
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This week at CES 2022, the tech industry’s annual mega-show, makers of smart-home products had a buzzword: “Matter.”
About two dozen companies showcased products that would be compatible with Matter, a new smart-home protocol that aims to enable devices to work with each other across different brands and systems. Exhibitors at CES 2022 showed they were on board with the new standard, which is backed by big-name brands like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Samsung. Matter is slated to be released this year, possibly the first half of 2022.
Matter will offer an open source connectivity standard so that smart-home devices can seamlessly integrate with one another. For example, Amazon announced new developer tools to make it easier for Alexa partners to support Matter. Google announced Fast Pair in showing its support for Matter. Other companies like GE Lighting, LG, Mui Labs, Nanoleaf, Sengled, Samsung’s SmartThings, and Belkin all showed products that will support the new standard.
Toronto Real Estate Is On Fire, But It’s Also Ontario’s Worst Performing Market
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Toronto real estate prices are some of the fastest growing of any global hub, but it might seem slow at home. Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) data shows Toronto is the slowest growing market in Ontario. Small cities are growing up to 3x faster, closing the gap between the county’s economic engine.
Toronto Real Estate Prices Have Grown Over 28%
Toronto real estate prices have shown massive growth over the past few years. The benchmark price hit $1,188,700 in November, up 28.3% from a year ago. Any double-digit annual growth is considered very fast, but nearly a third higher? That’s huge and unprecedented for the city. Somehow that massive annual growth was the second slowest of any major market in Ontario.
Happy New Year for the housing market? Expect another pandemic-fuelled seller’s market in 2022
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Double-digit price gains, investors, condos and suburbs expected to remain hot housing trends in 2022, experts say.
Calgary continues to report high market performance in spite of the traditionally slow winter market
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Calgary is currently among the most affordable of the major cities in Canada for real estate, which is particularly attractive given the out-of-control prices being seen in other major markets. According to a recent report, homes in Calgary are actually deeply undervalued. However, according to local realtor Jesse Davies, growth potential in the market means there is still a lot to look forward to.
According to the Calgary Real Estate Board’s (CREB) new statistics release for the month of November, the average price of a detached home in the city was $542,600, up over 10% year over year. Semi-detached homes averaged $429,800 and apartments averaged just $251,700 with the lowest year-over-year increase. In addition, despite winter being seen as a traditionally slow season for the city, according to CREB sales have remained strong at “roughly the same levels seen since August” while inventories continue to fall.
Calgary’s strong 2021 real estate market expected to continue in 2022
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Calgary’s real estate market has experienced a banner year in 2021 so far, and the good times are likely to keep rolling in 2022, a new report suggests.
PwC released its 2022 Canadian real estate forecast this fall, including for Calgary, noting the city is experiencing newfound optimism about its economy and, in turn, real estate.
House prices in Canada will rise higher in 2022, real-estate report says
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Housing prices in Canada are expected to increase steadily in 2022, with inter-provincial migration continuing in many regions and a short supply of homes in those areas pushing up costs, according to Re/Max’s housing market outlook report published Wednesday.
Sale prices are projected to go up by 9.2 per cent on average across the country next year, the real-estate company estimates. It would follow an already “sensational” year in terms of sales and price appreciation, Re/Max’s president says.
“In the history of our nation, I don’t know of, certainly not in my tenure, of more than 95% of markets being in seller’s market territory,” he told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview. “So it can’t be overstated enough how strong the market was in Canada in 2021.”
Five Ontario cities with the lowest and highest property tax rates revealed
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The five Ontario cities with the lowest and highest property tax rates in the province have been revealed.
A newly-released report from Zoocasa, a real estate agency that offers market analysis, analyzed the property tax rates for 35 Ontario municipalities in 2021.
Zoocasa’s report said there is a “significant variance” in the annual property tax rates paid by homeowners in Ontario depending on where they live.
Alberta creates close to 20,000 jobs in August, following national growth rate
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Statistics Canada numbers released Friday shows employment in the province rose by 19,500 jobs compared to July when accounting for seasonal adjustments, resulting in a 0.9 per cent growth rate. The majority of new jobs came in the form of full-time work with 16,300 jobs. Part-time work rose by 3,100 new positions.
Alberta’s unemployment rate dropped 0.6 percentage points from July, down to 7.9 per cent. The number of people who are unemployed but actively looking for work dropped to 193,400 from 208,400 last month.
Moving to a small town for cheaper housing? Prepare to pay more to get around, for insurance and repairs
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After spending the pandemic living and working in a 550-square-foot apartment in Toronto’s Junction Triangle, Ian Cable and his girlfriend Amy Stewart began searching the neighbourhood for more living space.
“We just looked at what it would take to buy a house, and it would have been within our means, but very, very stretched,” Mr. Cable says. “We would have been house-poor.”
Instead, the couple – who are both in their early 40s – moved two-and-a-half hours north to Ms. Stewart’s hometown of Owen Sound, settling into a modestly-sized three bedroom home on a one-acre lot. While the house cost a fraction of a similar property in Toronto, Mr. Cable says they’ve run into a few costs they hadn’t expected.
Since the pandemic struck, thousands of Canadians have left big cities in search of more room and affordable real estate. But moving to rural areas comes with unanticipated changes in living expenses, such as higher transportation costs, repairs and insurance