Home sales in Toronto and Vancouver rose in Canada during March despite coronavirus containment measures that led to a sharp drop-off in activity at the end of the month.
A total of 8,012 homes were sold across the Greater Toronto Area in March, marking a 12.3% year-over-year jump, according to data released by the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB). Of those sales, 4,643 were registered in the first half of the month, marking a 49% jump from the same period last year, according to TREB. In the second half of the month, Toronto home sales were down almost 16% from the back half of March 2019.
Overall, active listings of homes available for purchase across the Greater Toronto Area sank 31.5% year-over-year in March, according to TREB, continuing a trend that's seen inventory decline in recent months. The March sales activity pushed the average selling price of a house in Toronto up 14.5% year-over-year to $902,680.
Meanwhile, in Vancouver, overall sales for the month of March rose 46.1% to 2,524 units compared with a year earlier. Sales averaged 138 units per day for the first 10 days of March but were down to an average of 93 a day during the last 10 days of the month.
New listings in Vancouver were down 10.4% from the same month last year to 4,436, units but up 10.8% from February. The decline in sales left activity down 19.9% from the 10-year average and put a hold on the recovery momentum that the market had been seeing since the end of 2019.
The average home price in Vancouver rose 2.1% in March to $1.03 million.
