Most consumers have no idea about the secretive practice of assignments in Toronto’s condo market, let alone the effect they have on condo prices.
Urbanation Inc, a data research firm, has officially cancelled a survey on the speculation in the Toronto condo market due to a lack of cooperativeness in providing data by the vast majority of developers. With the support of CMHC, Urbanation was attempting to quantify how many “assignments” are taking place in development prior to development registration.
According to Urbanation, in August, they had sent notice to 120 developers from across Toronto that have developed property over the past 5 years that they were conducting this survey with CMHC. Â Only 15 developers responded with their data.
This market is extremely difficult to quantify because very little data is being captured by real estate boards or other organizations.  There is speculation that there is little motivation to provide clarity to this segment of the market, because buyers, who later assign units, don’t have to pay the capital gains on their transactions and developers earn fees to facilitate the assignments.
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