Housing market insights from Riz Dhanji, President and Founder, RAD Marketing

By Susan Legge
November 13, 2020

On the cusp of the pandemic’s second wave in Ontario, we recently asked five industry game changers to share their insights and predictions for the year ahead with regards to the pre-construction real estate industry. Here’s what they had to say...

What I believe is this is a short-term phenomenon that’s happening. The reason is because, obviously with the pandemic, people feel that they have this option to work from home now. People think “Okay, I can move out of the city now” because they don’t have to work five days a week downtown or maybe they can do four days a week outside the city. Traffic is easier, so it’s a lot better.

Immigration

People are not understanding that there’s an end date to this, and the end date is the vaccine. In the news right now there’s a possibility of a vaccine early next year, with mass adoption come spring or summer of next year, right? As soon as that happens and as soon as companies start to say “Okay, the cases have gone down. It’s under control. We want people come back to the office,” you’re going to see companies and employees starting to move back into the office, particularly in the downtown core. You’re going to see borders open up and immigration start to flow, too. Over the next few years, Canada may well make up for the immigration that it has lost this year. So, traffic is going return, and people are going to say “Wait a minute, my drive is two hours now when I thought it was going be less, and now my employers asking me to come back to work more often.”

Return to office

We need to rethink this strategy of staying outside and look at moving back into the city. That’s my sense, for the next year. I’m not saying that everyone who decided to move outside of the city is going come back, but a big portion of them will move back in and a big portion of new immigrants will take over renting condos in the downtown core and working in the downtown core. Major tech companies and corporations such as Amazon and Shopify are still increasing office space there. So, they’re looking 10 years out.

Yes, there will still be a certain amount of working from home, but eventually people are going to get back into the office.

About Susan Legge

During her journeys around world of real estate, Susan has seen the good, the bad and the unbelievable as an investor, renovator and homeowner.

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