Foreign Aid for Toronto

Why hasn’t Toronto’s housing market tanked like London’s or New York’s? Just take a look at who’s buying.

Watching the global real estate market from Toronto these days can make you feel a little like Nero with his fiddle. As the sub-prime meltdown spreads from city to city, expensive condos from London to New York now sit on the market for months at a time.

Meanwhile, Toronto assumes the mantle of condo capital of North America. We are the only major English-speaking city in our hemisphere to have plowed right through the 2007 crisis without so much as a blip. Everybody’s wondering why we’re weathering the storm so well (and just how long that will last). Sherry Cooper, the renowned BMO economics guru, says we shouldn’t look to our local population for the explanation. “The number of units sold,” she says, “particularly at the affluent level, is growing by far more than the number of high-end domestic households.”

So who’s snapping up all the condos? Iranians, mainly. And Russians, and South Koreans, and Brits. Agent Shaun Hsu says that half his sales over the past year have been to foreign buyers. Others, particularly at the high-end firms, say that Iranians are their single biggest client group these days. Michael Kalles, president of Harvey Kalles, estimates they’ve had about 100 Iranian clients buy over the past three years. Mark McLean of Sotheby’s says much of his business comes from his company’s 450 offices around the world. “It’s non-stop for us,” he says.” We have 18 agents all working, just trying to keep up.” One man from Iran, who hasn’t even decided if he’ll move here, recently bought three not-yet-built condos through Forest Hill Real Estate, with a price tag of about $11 million.

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