Not Enough Sell­ers

Matthew Coutts, National Post

House prices in neigh­bour­hoods across Toronto rose sig­nif­i­cantly last year, thanks to a return of con­sumer con­fi­dence after a wilted 2008.

West-end Blo­ordale Vil­lage and east-end Riverdale joined Wil­low­dale and the Bri­dle Path in the north with some of the biggest jumps, accord­ing to year-end num­bers released by the Toronto Real Estate Board yesterday.

The Greater Toronto Area saw a total of 87,308 trans­ac­tions, a 17% increase over 2008 — although below the record 93,193 trans­ac­tions in 2007. The aver­age price of a home bought in 2009 also climbed 4% from 2008 to $395,460.

“The demand is very high and there are not enough sell­ers on the mar­ket,” said Re/Max Realton’s Julie Han-Emery, who noted: “The hous­ing prices in the Wil­low­dale area are very high, it’s a very desir­able area. I think there is a lot of demand there.”

Last month, the aver­age GTA home price was $411,931, far sur­pass­ing Decem­ber 2008′s $361,415. In the city of Toronto itself, the aver­age price in Decem­ber reached $441,607, up from $387,482 in 2008.

“It was our con­tention that once con­sumer con­fi­dence began to turn around you would see peo­ple move back into the hous­ing mar­ket pretty quickly,” said Jason Mer­cer, TREB’s senior man­ager of mar­ket analysis.

While the mar­ket was up across the Greater Toronto Area, neigh­bour­hoods such as Blo­ordale Village/High Park saw specif­i­cally higher aver­age hous­ing prices. After drop­ping in aver­age sale price in 2008 to $401,901 from $435,353 the pre­vi­ous year, sales in the area rebounded to $498,778 in 2009 (a two-year jump of $63,425).

“Blo­ordale is an area that is really com­ing together. You get houses that need ren­o­va­tion and … is really attrac­tive because you can get in at a decent price. It’s per­fect for a first-time buyer,” sad Kim Kehoe, a Royal Lep­age West real­tor in the area. “With the High Park area, you have Ron­ces­valles which is so much in demand, and there is just no sup­ply. Any­thing that comes out there, you would have 13 peo­ple bid­ding on a property.”

Wil­low­dale jumped up $50,364 from two years ago to $430,131, while the Bri­dle Path and Riverdale both improved by about $49,000, to aver­age sale prices of $1,315,088 and $458,045 respectively.

In the Bri­dle Path, the price of a detached house specif­i­cally increased dra­mat­i­cally, to $2,359,346 from $1,650,205 in 2007.

The aver­age price of houses in the For­est Hill/Oakwood-Vaughan area were actu­ally down $89,169 to $734,748 from two years ago. How­ever, the price of a detached house increased against this trend, to $1,063,881 from $944,667 in 2007.

And the aver­age price of sales in Moore Park were down $81,560 to $1,003,663, while the price of a detached house increased dra­mat­i­cally against this trend, to $2,757,944 from $2,060,800 in 2007.

In these cases, it was the slightly higher num­ber of lower val­ued hous­ing, such as semi-detached homes and condo apart­ments, that led to the over­all drop in aver­age value. In each cat­e­gory, sale prices were up over 2007.

————————————————————————————————————

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

————————————————————————————————————

Related posts:

1. Toronto real estate resilient in first half of 2009 In the midst of the reces­sion, approx­i­mately 20% of single-detached…
2. Toronto Real Estate 2009 Year In Review Sales growth in the Toronto Real Estate Board’s dif­fer­ent districts…
3. Real estate mar­ket review: 2009 so far On a month-over-month basis, Feb­ru­ary sales and aver­age price were…
4. Heated hous­ing activ­ity through­out 2009 lends lit­tle air to bub­ble the­ory While one quar­ter of all Toronto Real Estate Board districts…
5. Ana­lysts fore­cast near-record home sales in 2009 Favourable year-over-year real estate num­bers came out Mon­day, show­ing home…