Are condos poised to make a comeback?! In some areas, this does appear to be the case. The cost of single family homes is on the rise, and are on their way to becoming unaffordable for many buyers.
In the Vancouver region, where resale house prices jumped nearly 14 per cent last year to more than $950,000, it now takes 109 per cent of median pretax income to afford the costs of a mortgage, property taxes and utilities on a typical detached house, according to a fourth-quarter analysis by Royal Bank of Canada economists Craig Wright and Robert Hogue. And the city of Toronto is not far behind Vancouver, as detached house prices reach new levels.
These increases have pushed many first-time buyers into the condo market, which has actually become more affordable for such buyers because of an abundance of supply. In fact, Toronto and Hamilton are the only two major cities in which condo ownership has become more expensive over the years. In cities such as Edmonton, Winnipeg and Ottawa it is now cheaper to make a mortgage payment on a condo than to pay rent, a trend driven by a boom in new condo construction coupled with weak job markets that have encouraged more prospective first-time buyers to continue renting.
For the full article, check out this Globe and Mail News article.
The time to get into real estate appears to be now. Detached houses are quickly dissappearing, and we may see condos start to rise as well. Although my prediction here in Ottawa, is that we have quite some time before we see anything close to a Vancouver market 
For more details and forecasts on Ottawa’s house and condo markets, please contact me here.
CHRIS STEEVES