October was an incredibly interesting month for the GTA’s real estate market. The Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) just recently released the housing statistics for last month. For your convenience, we have summarized the most important points here, but if you’d like more information, you can see the full report at the TREB website here. If you’d like to see our report from last month for comparison, you can find it here.
As of this October, overall sales are down 26.7%, but pricing is up by almost 2.5%. New and active listings are also up 11.8% and 78.5% respectively. Another thing to note is that we are seeing an increase on the average days on market. Last year, a seller could expect their home to be sold in an average of 16 days, and this year that average has spiked by almost 44% – a whopping seven day increase.
It is common to see a general increase in sales between September and October each year, and this year was no different. Even though we experienced a sharp decline in the percentage of listings sold from February to May this year (81.5% down to 39.5%), the recent numbers seem to show a recovery and correlation to the trends of previous years for this coming winter season (Figure 1). October’s percentage of listings sold is back at 37.7%, which is comparable to the 2012 and 2013 numbers. If you take a look at last year, the market was extremely hot. Percent of listings sold was at an all time high, and the months of inventory (Figure 2) were around 1 month from last April to this April, even dipping below 1 month in an ultra seller’s market during February and March. Since then, months of inventory rose to around 3, and from August of this year, the numbers have started to normalize back to what the trends have been in past years, which is a happy medium for both buyers and sellers.
Figure 1
If you take a look at the October condo apartment stats for this year, that’s where the most interesting information lies. We have had a decline in overall sales, but it is the selling price that’s telling. Condos were selling at an average price of almost 22% higher than last year!
This means that while more higher priced abodes, such as detached and semi-detached houses are cooling down at the moment, condo sales are flourishing, and they’re holding value excellently. Since the implementation of a number of policy changes both provincially and federally, people have been buying more within their means, which explains this statistic, since condos are generally the lowest priced of all home types. It is important to note that most of these sales (over 75%) were in the 416 area code, as opposed to the 905, so it does seem to be location dependent.
Looking at the months of inventory, (the number of months it would take to sell all the listings on the market, without adding any new listings) we see that there was a slight decrease from September to October, (2.98 down to 2.65) which is quite different from the very low numbers of last years’ fall, though it is correlating to the more stable fall periods of 2013 and 2014 (Figure 2).
Figure 2
All in all, it’s been an exciting month for real estate! It is important to note that these numbers are for the GTA and are not neighbourhood specific. Today’s ever-changing market can be tough to navigate, but we’re here to help. If you’d like some clarification on anything we’ve mentioned in this article, or more specific information on your neighbourhood, feel free to contact us at 647-504-0690 or send us an email.