Tamsin McMahon – The Globe and Mail

Average Toronto home prices jumped 10% in March, driven by a sharp rise in the price of detached homes to well over $1-million in the city.

Comment: Detached prices rose almost 2 months ago now… And they are now $50,000 less than they were in February. So the price rise is not driven by detached home sales. It is coming from all the other market segments.

Sales jumped 11% in March compared to last year, the Toronto Real Estate Board said. New listings also rose 5.5%, although it wasn’t enough to slow the double-digit price growth. Across the region the average home price rose to $613,933.

Comment: Even when listings rise, sales outpace them. More houses sell every month than are listed. For years now. How can there be anything for sale anymore? Seriously.

The price of a detached home in the city jumped nearly 16% to $1,042,405 as the market shifted toward sales of higher-end homes, Jason Mercer, the board’s director of market analysis, said in a statement. In the suburbs, the average price of detached home rose 10% to $709,116.

Comment: How is that possible when February detached prices were $1.099-million?

The gap between prices of condos and houses continued to grow in March. Across the region, condo prices rose 4.3% to $372,827, with prices rising twice as fast in the suburbs as they did in the city.

With the region experiencing lacklustre economic growth so far this year (the real estate board cites figures showing employment in the GTA dropped 1% in February) board president Paul Etherington pointed to low interest rates, which have softened the blow of rising house prices and helped fuel “a substantial amount of pent-up demand” in the market for low-rise homes, he said in a statement.

The Greater Toronto Area remains one of Canada’s few red-hot housing markets, behind only Greater Vancouver, where sales jumped 53% in March and the average detached home price topped $1.4-million. Meanwhile sales have dropped in oil-fuelled cities such as Calgary, Edmonton and Regina, while the housing market has also been weak in Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

Sales of luxury homes jumped 45% in the first quarter of 2015 compared with a year earlier, said Toronto real estate broker Barry Cohen. There have been 279 homes sold above $2-million so far this year, compared with 193 last year. That included nine sales above $5-million, with the most expensive home, located in Mississauga, selling for more than $7-million.

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Contact Laurin Jeffrey for more information – 416-388-1960

Laurin Jeffrey is a Toronto real estate agent with Century 21 Regal Realty.
He did not write these articles, he just reproduces them here for people who
are interested in Toronto real estate. He does not work for any builders.
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