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City's housing market strong and diverse
DEREK RAYMAKER
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Many suburban politicians and planning officials like to brag that their communities are "in transition," no longer dependent on the urban centre for their economic survival and more than bedroom communities populated by sleepy commuters. Few of those communities can truly live up to the transition hype.
Mississauga, however, appears to be in that league, after decades of being in the shadow of Toronto. The city has attracted a large chunk of white-collar jobs from surrounding communities, and also has a well-regarded university campus and community college.
You can reasonably claim to be able to grow up, get an education, raise a family and work in Mississauga without ever having to bomb down the Queen Elizabeth Way or Highway 401 to find a missing piece of the puzzle.
But the problem with successfully making the transition to mature city is that when a community does turn that corner, there's no slowing down.
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The Globe and Mail
Mississauga is growing by more than 20,000 people a year and will likely have a population of 700,000 by the end of this year.
Many of these new residents — about 35 per cent — are also new Canadians, having immigrated from other countries. In this respect, Mississauga is not alone among the suburbs of the Greater Toronto Area, but its housing market appears better prepared to absorb large numbers of people in a wider variety of entry-level dwellings.
Mississauga can boast a big selection of new housing. In particular, it has come on strong as a high-rise market since 2001, thanks to an aggressive multiphase tower-building spree in its town centre, a parcel surrounding the Square One shopping centre.
In the first six months of 2006, high-rise starts in Mississauga made up 68 per cent of all housing starts in the municipality, with 1,675, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. That's more than double the 599 starts for the same period in 2005.
The low-rise market, meanwhile, has lagged in starts so far this year, with only 384 single-family detached homes under construction, along with 88 semi-detached and 89 townhouses for the January to June period.
Compared with neighbouring Brampton, where the first six months saw ground broken for 1,128 new detached houses along with 450 semis and townhouses, Mississauga's low-rise construction appears slow. But like most mature markets, Mississauga has a healthy resale market that absorbs a lot of new buyers.
Last year saw large increases in average prices for new low-rise products across the 905 suburban belt, and Mississauga was no exception.
The reason was an impending land shortage, which caused a slight panic among buyers and builders hoping to seal the deal on already launched projects before prices got really out of hand.
That has not occurred so far in 2006. The average price of a new single-family detached home is pretty steep at 2,834 for the six months starting with January, but it is up a fairly reasonable 6 per cent from the same period last year, when the average price was 4,658.
About 80 per cent of all new single-family homes sold in Mississauga are more than 0,000. In Brampton, a new detached house is considerably more affordable, with an average price of 4,490, up 2 per cent from 6,773 in the January-to-June period of 2005.
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