This home at 65 Glengowan Rd. in Toronto is typical of the type of house being listed for sale in the window between Family Day and March break. Its asking price is $9,995,000.The Print Market
Real estate dealings often send out early signals of a shift in the political and economic landscape.
Mining boss Mark Bristow made headlines last week when he floated the prospect of moving the headquarters of Barrick Gold Corp. from Canada to the United States.
It turns out he’s not the only chief executive pondering such a move.
As my colleague Niall McGee reported, Mr. Bristow told The Globe and Mail’s editorial board that the Toronto-based mining giant is considering redomiciling to the United States, and the prospect could become a reality sooner under the Trump administration.
Other business owners who are worried about a trade war between Canada and the United States are mulling over the possibility of relocating stateside, says Andre Kutyan, broker with Harvey Kalles Real Estate.
Mr. Kutyan has heard from high net-worth clients with companies in manufacturing, wholesaling goods and the service industry who already have some operations in the United States and believe that concentrating their business there may be the right play.
At the same time, they are thinking about minimizing their exposure in real estate.
These sellers, with properties in the $8-million to $12-million strata, are not planning to move south imminently, he says, but downsizing their biggest asset to a house in the $4-million to $6-million range may make the move easier down the road.
“These are people thinking two or three steps ahead,” he says. “They’re saying, ‘we don’t know how this is going to play out.’”
Meanwhile, while some home and business owners in Toronto are thinking about heading south, others are planning a move in the opposite direction.
Mr. Kutyan points out that there are buyers with cash in hand who figure the chaos in politics, and unease surrounding the economy, creates a good environment in which to find an anxious seller.
“Some will try to be opportunistic when things are in flux.”
Mr. Kutyan received an opening salvo for one house he has listed in a high-end Toronto neighbourhood from a couple planning a move back to Canada from the United States.
The offer came in the form of a letter of intent, which laid out the basic terms, such as the price, closing date and small deposit the buyer was offering.
Writing a letter of intent is a common practice in the commercial real estate business, Mr. Kutyan says, but rare in the residential segment.
In this case, the price was far below asking for the house listed in the bracket between $4-million and $10-million.
“The buyer didn’t even see the house,” he says, adding that the individual appears to have tested the waters with a few sellers in central and midtown Toronto in an effort to see which ones are hungry.
“This means nothing,” Mr. Kutyan told the buyer’s agent as he advised the seller not to tie up the property by agreeing to the terms.
He suggested the buyer should submit a conditional offer good for five days, including a deposit cheque of at least 5 per cent, and take the time to view the house in person.
That did prompt the buyer to make a formal offer, and the seller signed back a counter-offer, but the buyer did not budge from the original price, says Mr. Kutyan.
Nothing came of the negotiations and the buyer walked away.
In affluent areas of Toronto, houses are typically selling for about 95 per cent of the asking price, he says.
Any seller is better off trimming the asking price by 5 per cent in the broader market to see if it drums up a new buyer than accepting an offer 15 per cent below asking, he adds.
The Canadian dollar’s low value compared with the U.S. currency, and the lower interest rates on this side of the border, are also working in favour of U.S.-based buyers, he points out.
Despite the turmoil in Canada-U.S. relations, transactions continue for the usual reasons – including upsizing, downsizing, divorce and death.
Mr. Kutyan is preparing to list detached houses that will hit the market during the window between Family Day and the school March break.
So far in 2025, there also appears to be more resolve among sellers than buyers to take decisive action as listings swell and buyers move in slow motion.
John Lusink, president of Right at Home Realty and Property.ca, says listing inventory at his company had risen 5 per cent by the midpoint of February from January, and stood 31 per cent higher compared with the same time last year.
Mr. Lusink has been “madly changing forecasts” for the firm with branches around Ontario because of the unpredictability of the current landscape.
The industry veteran started 2025 feeling optimistic about the coming spring market because interest rates have come down over the past several months and he believes there is plenty of pent-up demand from buyers who have been on the sidelines.
The ample supply will appeal to buyers, he figures, and prices are stable.
Mr. Lusink continues to expect a reasonably good pace of sales in the remainder of February and into March, but the more distant outlook is murky.
Some of those potential buyers are also watching inventory rise, and they are betting prices may soften, he adds.
Mr. Lusink says the current balanced market feels like a return to the more “normal” markets of 15 or more years ago.
Still, he sees potential risks on the horizon, and not just from the tariff fight.
Additional supply is due to arrive from the completion of new condo projects and low-rise houses, he says.
The rental market in the Greater Toronto Area and other centres is weakening, which continues to bring on more listings from investors who are deciding to sell rather than find new tenants.
At the same time, 2025 and 2026 will see a wave of mortgage renewals for homeowners who purchased with five-year fixed-rate mortgages while interest rates were at historic lows in 2020 and 2021.
Even though borrowing costs have come down from their peaks, many homeowners will be facing a renewal at much higher rates.
“That will catalyze a lot of listings for sale,” Mr. Lusink says. “We’re going to see lots of additional supply – that’s for sure.”
Mr. Lusink keeps an eye on listings under “power of sale” in the GTA, and that number has been creeping up. In January, for example, Mr. Lusink found 331 such properties listed compared with 143 in January of 2024 and 57 in the same month in 2023.
The levels are not alarming, he points out, but he believes the trend does indicate that a rising number of homeowners are not able to keep up.
While Mr. Lusink remains positive, he doesn’t disregard the risk that the economic picture will darken significantly if businesses suffer under a trade war and workers lose their jobs in large numbers. That in turn would likely lead to distressed selling.
“That’s where the worries come in.”
Cities such as Hamilton, which has a high concentration of steel manufacturing, and Windsor, which supplies automotive parts and equipment, will be hard-hit by levies on Canadian imports if U.S. president Donald Trump does not back down.
If business owners and employees in those cities are worried about their incomes, Mr. Lusink says, they are less likely to trade up to a larger home, for example.
“Any of them would be more cautious.”