Historically, the single family detached market has retained it's strength better than the condo market. That's true in the West at least, but not sure about the GTA.
Locally, there are some 5,000+ condo units either existing or in construction beyond the "can stop" time. Many condos here owned by speculators who are going to get severely burned (once again, ppl never learn). I would far rather own the SF house than a condo in a down market.
As long as one doesn't have to sell in the next (say) 3 years, one should be OK, at least here where the market attracts many buyers from outside the area and province. In fact, the down tick may be beneficial in that some measure of affordibility can return to the marketplace.
In this year, we sold our previous house in April at a good price (market still strong then), closed July 2, put the money in the bank, and had our new, smaller house on a much smaller lot (our condo-alternative) built over the summer. Moved in Nov24, and have no intention of sell ing this new one for many years. Is it worth what we paid for it if we were forced to sell today? Probably not, but we don't care as we are not selling. Besides, our real cost base is the $250K we had invested in the previous house. All the rest was "profit/cap gain". Mortgage free here, and don't care where the market goes in the short term.
