Toronto real estate market sales up in October
From The Condo Guide
The new-home sales trends that have consistently prevailed throughout 2006 were completely reversed in October, according to RealNet Canada Inc., the independent source of real estate market information for GTHBA-UDI.
Whereas monthly sales have been trailing last year by about five or six per cent on average, the 4,012 new homes and condominiums sold in the Greater Toronto Area in October marked a four per cent sales increase over October, 2005.
And whereas the high-rise market has been outperforming the low-rise market month-in, month-out, all year long, high-rise sales decreased by 12% in October while low-rise sales surged 17% compared with October, 2005.
Anomaly or trend?
The question is whether or not the October results mark the beginning of a rebalancing of the low-rise and high-rise markets. Historically, the new housing market typically breaks down two-thirds low-rise and one-third high-rise in terms of product sales. Over the last few years, however, the high-rise market share has grown steadily, reaching 42% last year and averaging 44% through the first ten months of this year.
While I think that we will eventually see these markets realigning (although not necessarily back to the former status quo), I’m not sure that’s what was happening in October. Drilling down into the RealNet data, I discovered that sales in Halton region spiked 195% in October, based on a five-fold increase in low-rise housing sales in Milton. In any given month, new project openings can skew the results and that would appear to be the case for October.
Looking at the year to date totals, low-rise sales are down 10% while high-rise sales are almost exactly on par with last year, resulting in total ten month sales being down a modest 5.8% compared with 2005.
Total sales of 34,558 units have been made up of 19,311 low-rise homes and 15,247 high-rise units. Based on a projection of the November and December results from last year and my anticipation of a strong finish to this year, it is possible that new-home sales could break the 40,000 unit threshold once again. If not, they won’t be far off. All told, it’s been another phenomenal year for new-home sales.
As for new-home prices, the low-rise new-home price index currently sits at $402,284, up almost $15,000 or 3.9% since last October, while the high-rise price index sits at $315,754, up a whopping $27,167 or 9.4% since last October.
The RealNet new-home price index is the average asking price of all the remaining new homes and condos currently available for sale, weighted by remaining inventory, for projects of 15 or more units, excluding ultra-luxury product.
RealNet reports that the top five municipalities in the GTA for October were Toronto, 1,448; Milton, 552; Markham, 418; Brampton, 369 and Mississauga, 278.
The Condo Guide Magazine is an excellent source of housing information for those looking for information on new condos in Ontario, Canada. We offer the most up-to-date information on new condominiums across the greater Toronto area.
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