Home Prices Sink, Sales Plunge in Toronto
Homeowners who bought a year ago are down C$110,000 on average.
Home sales in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada’s largest housing market, plunged 35% in February compared to a year ago, to 5,175 homes. The plunge in volume was spread across all types of homes. Even the previously white-hot condo sector froze over:
- Detached houses -41.2%
- Semi-detached houses -28.7%
- Townhouses -26.8%
- Condos -30.8%.
New listings of homes for sale rose 7% year-over-year to 10,520, according to the report by the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB). The total number of active listings of homes for sale – which includes the new listings and the listings from prior months that hadn’t sold – skyrocketed 147% year-over-year to 13,362 homes.
At the current sales rate, total listings signify a supply of 2.5 months, which indicates that the housing market isn’t exactly drowning in listings, but the heat has burned out.
This is confirmed by the average days on the market before the home is sold or the listing is pulled: at 25 days, it was still relatively low, but it had nearly doubled from 13 days in February a year ago when the market was approaching its April apogee.
The plunge in sales volume, which has been going on for months, and the surge in listings signify that the market is in the process of changing direction. Housing markets move very slowly, over years, and not minutes. But prices are now following the decline in volume.
The average price for the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) plunged 12.4% overall to C$767,818. This represents a drop of about C$110,000 in the average home price over the 12-month period.
It split up this way:
- City of Toronto: -6.1% to C$806,494.
- Rest of the GTA without Toronto: -16.1% to C$743,196.
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