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.

Read more: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/mobile/five-ontario-cities-with-the-lowest-and-highest-property-tax-rates-revealed-1.5660362

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.

Read more: https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/alberta-creates-close-to-20000-jobs-in-august-following-national-growth-rate

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

Read more: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/household-finances/article-moving-to-a-small-town-for-cheaper-housing-prepare-to-pay-more-to-get/

Toronto area condo rentals and sales have seen “a dramatic resurgence” from the pandemic in which condo sales initially slumped and tenants fled their apartments leaving landlords to struggle to fill the vacancies, reports the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB).

Citing the return of a seller’s market, the board said condo sales climbed 10.3 per cent in the last quarter, compared to the same period last year. Listings plummeted 31 per cent, however, pushing the average selling price up about 9 per cent to $689,831.

Read more: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/10/29/condos-are-back-to-being-a-sellers-market-as-sales-rentals-rise-says-toronto-real-estate-board.html

The Canadian real estate slowdown is getting started, as another leading indicator fades. Statistics Canada (Stat Can) data shows building permit values fell in August. Since permits are for future activity, a decline means less building is coming. All the declines were due to a drop in residential permits, which has fallen sharply from its peak. While the drop is sharp, there’s no need to worry about supply concerns yet. Even at this reduced volume, the value of permits still exceeds pre-pandemic levels.

Read more: https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-real-estate-sees-another-leading-indicator-crash-over-20-from-peak/

Vancouver has been a presence on various lists of least-affordable housing for years, and now tops a survey released this month by Oxford Economics considering North America’s most expensive cities.

The group’s Housing Affordability Indices report concludes that “affordability deteriorated in nearly all U.S. and Canadian metros” in the second quarter of 2021. A typical Canadian house price hit 35 per cent above the borrowing capacity of median-income households, and in fact, results show a “more rapidly worsening affordability in Canada than in the U.S.,” Oxford says.

Read more: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canada-has-four-of-the-10-most-affordable-and-four-of-the-least-affordable-cities-in-north-america

The fact a Vancouver restaurant is offering $50,000 a year for a dishwashing job illustrates just how desperate some restaurants owners are for staff, said the director of the Richmond-based BC Asian Restaurant Café Owners Association.

A recent job posting titled “Effects of labour shortage, $50K per annum to wash dishes,” has gone viral on Reddit and WeChat. The job posting states, “pay per hour will be $25 for 40 hours per week. No experience or education is required, and training will be provided to the eligible candidates.”

Read more: https://www.richmond-news.com/local-news/50kyear-dishwashing-job-illustrates-desperation-in-restaurant-industry-4533006