Toronto Real­tors reported 4,133 condo sales through the Toronto MLS sys­tem dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2013. This result was down by approx­i­mately 17% in com­par­i­son to the first quar­ter of 2012.

Com­ment: Which is crazy when we see the direc­tion change com­pletely in the first half of April when sales were down only 4.3% but prices rose 5.9%. I think we are see­ing the condo mar­ket right itself and get back on solid foot­ing. Regard­less of the neg­a­tive spin the media has put on it for the past… oh, 10 years or so.

New list­ings of con­do­minium apart­ments were also down on a year-over-basis in the first quar­ter, but by a lesser annual rate of 5%.

Com­ment: So the flood of con­dos being sold by pan­ick­ing investors flee­ing the mar­ket did not hap­pen? Wow, I am NOT sur­prised in the least. If list­ings were down 5% and sales were down 17%, then it is only a net drop of 12%. Either way, there is no flood of con­dos on the mar­ket, like all the naysay­ers pre­dicted. Yet again, they were wrong. What are they now, 0–412?

“Buy­ers ben­e­fit­ted from a sub­stan­tial amount of choice in the condo mar­ket in the first quar­ter, espe­cially in com­par­i­son to low-rise home types. This being said, the fact that new condo list­ings were down in the first quar­ter sug­gests that the mar­ket may become tighter mov­ing for­ward. This will also depend on the tim­ing and scale of future condo apart­ment com­ple­tions,” said Toronto Real Estate Board Pres­i­dent Ann Hannah.

Com­ment: With only 3 new condo projects launched in Q1 2013, it would seem that the condo mar­ket will tighten. That is the beauty of the real estate mar­ket, it is self-correcting. If it appears that there is too much prod­uct or that projects won’t sell, the devel­op­ers hold back. Sure, there was help from Mr. Fla­herty on one front, but the mar­ket is dri­ven by so many inde­pen­dent peo­ple that it keeps itself in line. There were 85,731 sales through MLS in 2012. Assum­ing one buyer and one seller for each trans­ac­tion, plus a real­tor for each, that means there were 342,924 peo­ple involved in last year’s real estate mar­ket. Add in friends and rel­a­tives of buy­ers and sell­ers, never mind another 30,000-odd new home sales and you are prob­a­bly look­ing at 1,000,000 dif­fer­ent peo­ple touch­ing the mar­ket. Add in mort­gage bro­kers and bank reps, home inspec­tors, you name… think of every­one involved in all of those sales. That is why the mar­ket is 100% fair – the sales and prices are set by a HUGE com­mit­tee. It is not like 10 real­tors got together to scheme and plan it all out… That is why it cracks me up when peo­ple com­plain to me that high prices are all the fault of real estate agents, we are the ones mak­ing the mar­ket so costly and crazy and what­ever else it is that bugs them. So I explain that my involve­ment in the greater real estate mar­ket accounts for about 0.00583% of the total. And most agents have even less effect.

The aver­age price for first quar­ter condo sales was $332,846 – down by 0.5% com­pared to the same period in 2012.

Com­ment: A dip, yes, but not the cat­a­strophic col­lapse that so many pre­dicted. And the first half of April is show­ing prices turn­ing around and ris­ing 5.9% – quite a dif­fer­ence. And again, quite the oppo­site of what the doom brigade said would happen.

“With months of inven­tory high from a his­toric per­spec­tive, it makes sense that the aver­age sell­ing price for con­dos edged lower over the past two quar­ters. How­ever, March results were much more pos­i­tive com­pared to the first quar­ter as a whole, with the aver­age condo sell­ing price up by two per cent annu­ally for the GTA,” said Jason Mer­cer, TREB’s Senior Man­ager of Mar­ket Analysis.

Com­ment: Inven­tory may be high, but list­ings are going down. This will bring inven­tory down. Which will tighten the mar­ket. And fewer new projects launch­ing even fur­ther tight­ens the mar­ket. And this will push up prices.

Con­do­minium Mar­ket Sum­mary First Quar­ter 2013

Total TREB (905 and 416)
2013 Sales: 4,133 | Aver­age Price: $332,846
2012 Sales: 4,973 | Aver­age Price: $334,669

City of Toronto (416 only)
2013 Sales: 2,924 | Aver­age Price: $355,776
2012 Sales: 3,513 | Aver­age Price: $360,343

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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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is now the time to buy a condo in toronto 2013

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