National Resale Hous­ing Mar­ket Activ­ity Returned to Pre-recession Levels

Cana­dian real estate mar­ket activ­ity returned to pre-recession lev­els in May 2009. The rebound in activ­ity is being led by an increase in trans­ac­tions in some of the most expen­sive mar­kets in the coun­try, which is skew­ing the national aver­age price upward.

Accord­ing to sta­tis­tics released by the Cana­dian Real Estate Asso­ci­a­tion (CREA), actual home sales via the Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice (MLS) of Cana­dian real estate boards totalled 49,521 units in May 2009. This is less than 1% below activ­ity in the same month one year ago. Year-over-year declines have been shrink­ing since the begin­ning of the year.

“This is the third con­sec­u­tive record set­ting month this year and the fourth month where sales exceeded the pre­vi­ous year’s sales,” said Ottawa Board Pres­i­dent Rick Snell. “Year-to-date sales as of the end of June are up 1% over the same time period in 2008. We have seen a strong recov­ery from the slow start to this year,” he added.

The com­bi­na­tion of his­tor­i­cally low inter­est rates and sell­ers reduc­ing their ask­ing prices has cre­ated greater afford­abil­ity,” Fraser Val­ley Real Estate Board Pres­i­dent Paul Pen­ner said. Buy­ers are look­ing at monthly mort­gage costs that are 20–25% less than they were a year ago. That trans­lates into hun­dreds of dol­lars a month in savings.

A recent mar­ket poll con­firms that first-time home­buy­ers and peo­ple “buying-up” are tak­ing advan­tage of the cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tions. Results show that 32% of buy­ers were first-time home­buy­ers and 22% were buy­ers mov­ing from an apart­ment or town­house to a detached house.

“The re-emergence of seller’s mar­ket con­di­tions has exerted upward pres­sure on home prices,” explained Jason Mer­cer, Toronto Real Estate Board’s (TREB) Senior Man­ager of Mar­ket Analy­sis. “Look for sales to remain high rel­a­tive to list­ings in the sec­ond half of the year. This will keep home prices grow­ing.”

Toronto real estate mar­ket posts best June on record

Toronto, July 6, 2009 – In June 2009, Greater Toronto Real­tors reported a record 10,955 sales, up 27% from June 2008. The sea­son­ally adjusted annual rate of sales in June was 100,700.

“The record result in June is tes­ta­ment to the fun­da­men­tally sound hous­ing mar­ket in the GTA,” said TREB Pres­i­dent Tom Lebour. “An increas­ing num­ber of house­holds have been con­fi­dent in pur­chas­ing a home in the region’s afford­able and diverse resale hous­ing market.”

The aver­age price for June trans­ac­tions was $403,972 – up by 2% com­pared to the same month last year.

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