Kit Kadlec – Cana­dian Real Estate Magazine

Toronto home prices enjoyed upward momen­tum in Jan­u­ary, ris­ing 2.7% from the pre­vi­ous month and now 4.1% higher than a year earlier.

The gains were high­est in detached houses, but con­dos were also still higher in price than a year ago, accord­ing to the Toronto Real Estate Board’s Jan­u­ary Mar­ket Watch report. Over­all sales were also up 8.8% from a year ago.

The aver­age price of a detached home was $586,098 in Jan­u­ary, up 8% from a year ago. A condo apart­ment aver­age price was $321,475, up 5%. Town­houses showed the largest gain, up 9% to reach $359,467.

“Low inven­tory lev­els have kept com­pe­ti­tion between buy­ers strong, result­ing in robust annual rates of price growth over the last year,” said Jason Mer­cer, the TREB’s senior man­ager of mar­ket analy­sis. “Strong price growth is expected to attract more listings.”

As the list­ings grow, price growth will slow its increase, espe­cially by the sec­ond half of 2012, he said.

Com­ment: IF list­ings increase, which is a very big IF. Sales out­paced list­ings by 4% last year, we are still way behind. If list­ings went up 10% tomor­row, that might begin to sat­isfy the pent-up demand.

Con­dos have already started to show some decline, as the aver­age price dropped 2.6% from Decem­ber. At the same time, houses and town­houses con­tin­ued to see price gains over the last month.

But even as prices rise, they haven’t pushed buy­ers out of the mar­ket, as sales remain brisk, said the TREB report.

“A favourable afford­abil­ity pic­ture bol­stered by very low posted fixed mort­gage rates has kept home buy­ers con­fi­dent in their abil­ity to achieve the Cana­dian goal of home own­er­ship,” said TREB Pres­i­dent Richard Silver.

The TREB will be tak­ing part in a new way of report­ing price increases, led by the Cana­dian Real Estate Asso­ci­a­tion. The new MLS Home Price Index will be announced on Feb. 6 and is being touted as a less volatile mea­sure of home prices and home price changes than the tra­di­tional median and aver­age price measurements.

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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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