The demand has always been there, it’s just that the supply
has been awfully slow to catch up.
By now, everyone in Toronto is very aware of the disparity between
supply and demand when it comes to home sales. Average sale prices have been steadily climbing and the
number of new listings has slowly dwindled, making the GTA market more
competitive than ever. However it
seems that early indicators for the month of June show that homeowners may
finally be trying to take advantage of this robust market.
“If the first
two weeks of June are any indication, we may be seeing a turnaround in the
supply of homes for sale in the Greater Toronto Area. New listings were
up on a year-over-year basis for most major home types in the City of Toronto
and surrounding regions. However, sales growth outpaced growth in new
listings, which suggests that there is still a lot of pent-up demand yet to be
satisfied, so sellers’ market conditions will likely remain in place for the
remainder of 2014,” said Diane Usher, President of the Toronto Real Estate
Board.
For the first time in a long while, not only was the average
sale price steadily rising with the mercury, but new listings had also risen by
almost 8% in the first 14 days of June compared to 2013. Sales over that period were also up by
11.3% compared to the previous year.
The average selling price for June mid-month transactions
was $582,100, which represented an increase of 8.6 per cent compared to the
average of $535,865 in 2013.
“Average selling prices were up across the GTA for low-rise
home types like singles, semis and townhouses as well as for condominium
apartments. This is no surprise
given that the number of transactions was up compared to 2013 by a greater rate
than the number of new listings, which suggests that competition between buyers
arguably increased,” said Jason Mercer, TREB’s Senior Manager of Market
Analysis.
