GTA REALTORS® Report Monthly Resale Hous­ing Mar­ket Figures

Greater Toronto REALTORS® reported 4,138 sales dur­ing the first two weeks of March 2011 – a 5% decrease com­pared to the first two weeks of March 2010. The num­ber of new list­ings also dipped – down by 15% com­pared to the same period last year.

Com­ment: With Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary both 13% lower in vol­ume than 2010, it would seem that sales have risen 8%. While not a down­swing, just a respite from the fre­netic pace of the real estate mar­ket we have seen pre­vi­ously, it would appear that we are head­ing up again. And with May being the tra­di­tional peak for vol­ume and price, I think we are going to see val­ues higher than the records set last year. And if list­ings con­tinue to drop, it is going to do noth­ing but put fur­ther upward pres­sure on prices. Bar­ring a sig­nif­i­cant bump in inter­est rates (which is highly unlikely), there is noth­ing out there with the power to put the brakes on.

“A pos­i­tive eco­nomic out­look for the Greater Toronto Area, includ­ing steady growth in jobs and incomes, has kept house­holds con­fi­dent in their abil­ity to pur­chase and pay for a home over the long term,” said Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) Pres­i­dent Bill Johnston.

The aver­age price for trans­ac­tions dur­ing the first 14 days of March was $460,196, rep­re­sent­ing a 4.6% increase com­pared to the first two weeks of March 2010.

Com­ment: And that is for the GTA as a whole. The city of Toronto, the 416, has bro­ken $500k. It was not that long ago when the aver­age hit $400k and peo­ple made a fuss. When are we going to see an aver­age of $600,000?

“Mar­ket con­di­tions are tighter com­pared to this time last year, result­ing in more com­pe­ti­tion between buy­ers and sus­tained upward pres­sure on the aver­age sell­ing price. The annual rate of price growth is expected to range between 3% and 5% in 2011,” said Jason Mer­cer, TREB’s Senior Man­ager of Mar­ket Analysis.

Com­ment: My fore­cast is that we see an actual price increase of 5–8% by the end of the year.

Sum­mary Of March Sales And Aver­age Price

City of Toronto (“416″)
2011 Sales: 1,618 | Aver­age Price: $512,179
2010 Sales: 1,726 | Aver­age Price: $491,680

Rest of GTA (“905″)
2011 Sales: 2,520 | Aver­age Price: $426,820
2010 Sales: 2,627 | Aver­age Price: $406,298

GTA
2011 Sales: 4,138 | Aver­age Price: $460,196
2010 Sales: 4,353 | Aver­age Price: $440,153

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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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