The Greater Toronto Area housing market just had its best month ever in 2019, with December property prices skyrocketing 12% year over year to $837,788.
The Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) reports that the price increase was especially notable in the detached house segment, with prices rising 11.6% to $1,052,081 across the GTA.
“As anticipated, many home buyers who were initially on the sidelines moved back into the marketplace starting in the spring. Buyer confidence was buoyed by a strong regional economy and declining contract mortgage rates over the course of the year,” said TREB President Michael Collins.
While the City of Toronto saw the biggest jump for its single-family homes, with prices soaring 19.5% to $1,363,357, the 905 still posted significant gains, with detached housing prices rising 7.7% to $956,792.
In some 905 cities, the gains were even more dramatic — Newmarket real estate, for example soared 15.3% year over year to $897,347. In other cities, the gains were slightly below average. Oshawa real estate, for example, rose just 6.9% year over year to $600,709.
And it wasn’t just detached houses that saw a strong upswing — condo prices also jumped, by 10.4% across the GTA to $612,464.
The strong December market is likely due to two major factors: buyers re-entering the game after adjusting to tighter mortgage rules and the Ontario Fair Housing plan, along with extremely low supply that is driving competition and pushing up prices.
New listings dropped 18.1% to 3,531 while active listings plummeted 35.2% to just 7,406 transactions. Those drops in available inventory would be fine if demand had also eased up, but the opposite happened: sales surged 17.4% this December to 4,399 transactions.
“Over the last 10 years, TREB has been drawing attention to the housing supply issue in the GTA. Increasingly, policy makers, research groups of varying scope and other interested parties have acknowledged that the lack of a diverse supply of ownership and rental housing continues to hamper housing affordability in the GTA,” says Jason Mercer, TREB’s chief market analyst.
“Taking 2019 as an example, we experienced a strong sales increase up against a decline in supply. Tighter market conditions translated into accelerating price growth.Expect further acceleration in 2020 if there is no relief on the supply front,” he adds.
Check out the infographic for more data on this months housing market:
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