Toronto Real Estate Agents Report Mid-Month Resale Hous­ing Mar­ket Figures

Greater Toronto Area Real­tors reported 2,857 trans­ac­tions through the Toronto MLS sys­tem dur­ing the first 14 days of August 2012. This mid-month result rep­re­sented a dip of 7.6% in com­par­i­son to 3,091 sales reported dur­ing the same period in 2011.

Com­ment: Another dip in sales vol­ume – could it be a return to nor­mal pat­terns, sum­mer hol­i­days, land trans­fer tax, or some­thing else? No way to know right now, let’s see what hap­pens through the fall market.

“A num­ber of fac­tors played into the dip in sales in the first half of August. Sales growth in the spring was very strong, sug­gest­ing that some buy­ers sped up their deci­sion to buy. Stricter mort­gage lend­ing guide­lines that came into effect at the begin­ning of July likely prompted some house­holds to put their buy­ing deci­sion on hold. Finally, rel­a­tively higher home prices and the addi­tional upfront cost of the City’s Land Trans­fer Tax go a long way to explain the more pro­nounced dip in sales in the ’416′ area code,” said Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) Pres­i­dent Ann Hannah.

Com­ment: What is inter­est­ing is that sales went from being down 12% in July to down 7% in August – ris­ing 5% in a way. Also, new list­ings were up 12% in July but are down 12% in August – a full 24% rever­sal. Interesting…

The aver­age sell­ing price for the first two weeks of August in the Greater Toronto Area was $480,180 – up 9.2% in com­par­i­son to 2011.

Com­ment: So we have ris­ing sales and decling list­ings – and ris­ing prices. Might be back to the same old if we are not care­ful. Again, though, sum­mer tends to find peo­ple on vaca­tion and think­ing less about real estate.

“The strong annual rate of price growth so far in August was dri­ven by the single-detached mar­ket seg­ment, par­tic­u­larly in the City of Toronto. While this seg­ment of the mar­ket has been con­sis­tently tight over the past year, the strong double-digit price growth for single-detached houses in the City sug­gests that the mix of houses sold this year com­pared to last also changed, with higher end homes account­ing for a greater share of sales this year,” said Jason Mer­cer, TREB’s Senior Man­ager of Mar­ket Analysis.

Sum­mary of Toronto MLS Sales and Aver­age Price August 1 – 14

City of Toronto (416: sales –13.5% | price +14.1% | list­ings –12.3%)
2012 Sales: 1,010 | Avg Price: $502,092 | New List­ings: 1,974
2011 Sales: 1,167 | Avg Price: $440,036 | New List­ings: 2,252

Rest of GTA (905: sales –4.0% | price +6.6% | list­ings –1.5%)
2012 Sales: 1,847 | Avg Price: $468,198 | New List­ings: 3,497
2011 Sales: 1,924 | Avg Price: $439,300 | New List­ings: 3,552

GTA (sales –7.6% | price +9.2% | list­ings –5.7%)
2012 Sales: 2,857 | Avg Price: $480,180 | New List­ings: 5,471
2011 Sales: 3,091 | Avg Price: $439,578 | New List­ings: 5,804

Com­ment: Any­one sug­gest­ing a buy­ers’ mar­ket is for­get­ting that ris­ing prices are the domain of sell­ers. If sales and prices drop while list­ings rise, that is a buy­ers’ mar­ket. But when sales and list­ing drop while prices rise… sell­ers are still in control.

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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