Duncan McAllister – Metro

As we head into the spring season, real estate’s busiest time, Metro looks at what’s in store for the Toronto market for highrise and otherwise. One report has GTA condo sales down 25% in January, and the price gap between highrise and single-family homes continues to widen as the city-wide demand for houses outpaces supply.

Comment: Um, what? Condo resales in Toronto rose 11.2% in January, powered by a massive 23.3% rise in 905 region condo sales. New condo sales were lower, mind you, down 32.5%. But new condo sales were up by 2 sales in December, then rose 8.6% in February. Let’s not take one measure of one segment for one month and try to turn it into something it is not.

The latest report from RealNet Canada says that new highrise sales in the GTA fell 25% in January. Is this a bad omen for unsold condo inventory? No need to panic: RealNet says the new home sales are healthy, as they’re in line with historical averages.

Comment: Especially since they went up in December and then again in Februaruy. January was a slow month, it happens. I guess people bought resale condos instead, as their sales jumped 11.2% that month.

It’s a different story if you factor in single-family homes. According to the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB), GTA home sales actually surged nearly 15% in the first half of February. That’s based on sales of existing homes in the first two weeks of February, a 14.9% jump over the same point in 2014.

Comment: Wait, you can’t suddenly jump from new condo sales in January to resale freehold sales in 2 weeks in February. But the point is solid, Toronto real estate is strong and not slowing down.

And nationally, it’s a different story altogether, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA). Home sales across the board in Canada fell 3.1% between December and January. The average reflects weakened activity in oil provinces such as Alberta and Saskatchewan, although the weakness in these markets is not believed to affect other Canadian markets at this stage.

What say the agents? Re/max sales representative, David Batori works in Toronto’s Forest Hill North area. “January and February this year have exceeded my last year, which was one of the busiest years for my business in the 25 years I’ve been doing this.”

Like many real estate agents, Batori is optimistic that Toronto is headed into a strong housing market this year. “There’s been continued negativity from different analysts and different individuals in the Economist magazine, the World Bank, all these different organizations are basically stating that Toronto is 20, 30, 40% overvalued. That may be the case, but in the meantime, inventory levels remain low and there are still more buyers than there are listings, so that continues to prop up our prices and continues this ongoing strength.”

Harvey Kalles sales representative Jennifer Greenberg is cautiously optimistic. “I think it’ll have a similar strength as we saw last year. Every year things increase in value, so that doesn’t surprise me that we’ll see slightly higher sale prices than what we saw from last year.”

Comment: I think we are actually going to have higher numbers this year. Which scares me. But listings are flirting with rising, they are not down every time we measure. Mortgage rates have gone down. With strong demand, a little more supply and lower interest rates – the stage is set for surging numbers.

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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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