By: Zoocasa
Winter and spring were a rocky time for the Greater Toronto Area housing market, but sales and prices started to climb in June and have held steady through August.
The Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) reported 6,839 sales through the MLS system, up 8.5 per cent from last August. The average property in the GTA now sells for $765,270, up 4.7 per cent year over year.
“Market conditions in the summer of 2018, including this past August, were tighter than what was experienced in the summer of 2017,” said Jason Mercer, TREB’s director of market analysis.
Sales are up for all housing types except for townhouses, which showed a modest 1 per cent decline. Detached houses, in contrast to earlier in 2018, are essentially flying off the MLS, and are up 17.7 per cent from last August. Compare that to May 2018 which had 28.2 per cent less sales than the year before.
Condos are stable at 0.7 per cent growth, but that disguises the differences in the 416 and the 905. In the 905 condo sales are up 18.6 per cent while in the 416 they are down 5.6 per cent. It’s unclear why prospective buyers in the 416 are pressing pause on condo sales, while those in the 905 are rushing to buy. It could just be a seasonal end-of-summer blip, but it’s something to watch out for in the autumn.
In terms of prices, all property types are either stable or showing growth across both the 416 and 905. Condos, as has been the case all year, show the strongest price growth at 6.4 per cent year-over-year to $541,106, while detached houses grew just 1.2 per cent to $977,187. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s better than detached houses did in the spring - detached houses were down 9 per cent year over year in May.
If you’re looking to buy a house for under $1 million dollars, you should head to smaller cities in Ontario and check out London, Ontario real estate or Ottawa homes for sale, where detached houses can be had for less than the price of a GTA condo.
Prices are only expected to rise in upcoming fall, as supply issues that have been plaguing the GTA for the last decade continue.
“In August, the annual rate of sales growth outpaced the annual rate of new listings growth. We only have slightly more than two-and-a-half months of inventory in the TREB market area as a whole and less than two months of inventory in the City of Toronto,” said Mercer. “This means that despite the fact the sales remain off the record highs from 2016 and 2017, many GTA neighbourhoods continue to suffer from a lack of inventory.”
As long as people want to live in Toronto, and without a massive new developments or sellers listing their properties, we’re likely to see sustained price growth for the near future.
Check out the infographic below for all the details:
Zoocasa.com is a leading real estate company that combines online search tools and a full-service brokerage to empower Canadians to buy or sell their homes faster, easier and more successfully. Home buyers can browse real estate listings on the website or the free iOS app.
