Toronto real estate prices warmed up in September, but this report wasn’t indication of a hot market. Numbers from the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) showed price growth in a number of segments. However, inventory continues to rise against a decline in home sales in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
Price Growth Deceleration Slows
The composite price of homes across Toronto saw a rise. TREB reported a composite benchmark price, a.k.a. the price of a typical home, is now $750,800, up 12.22% from the same month last year. In the City of Toronto proper, the composite benchmark is now $787,700, a 15.28% increase compared to last year. The composite moved higher mostly due to an increase in condo prices.
Better Dwelling. Source: TREB
The average sale prices aren’t looking nearly as hot, but are doing better than last month. TREB reported an average sale price of $775,546, up 5.9% from the month before. Despite the large monthly climb, that only brings the average up 2.6% compared to last year. The City of Toronto did slightly better, with the average price hitting $809,591, up 5.84% from last year. The important tidbit here is trend of price deceleration broke. Doesn’t mean prices are going to soar any minute, but it does mean it could be worse.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
Best and Worst Price Changes In Dollars
Neighborhoods are seeing huge monthly swings in the benchmark price. The biggest gainer was TREB C10, which is the Mount Pleasant East area. There, the benchmark price rose $15,200 from the month before. The benchmark is now $986,200, a 15.08% increase from the same month last year.
The biggest drop was in TREB C09, the Rosedale-Moore Park neighborhood. There the composite price dropped $45,300 from the month before. The benchmark price in that neighbourhood fell to $1,135,400, but is still up 15.48% from last year.
New Listings Jump 42.92% From The Month Before
Inventory made a big return, after the August lull. New listings across the GTA hit 16,469, a massive 42.92% increase from the month before. This is an 8.99% increase from the same month last year.
Better Dwelling. Source: TREB
Active listings, which are the number of listings still for sale at month end also increased. Total active listings reported was 19,021, up 15.85% from the month before. This represents a 69% increase compared to the same month last year. The seasonal increase is somewhat normal, but is massive relative to last year. Note the term relative, because agents will say there’s still less inventory than typical. This is true compared to historic trends, but does that matter? It’s really up to the market to decide what’s the new normal.
Sales Are Down Over 35% From Last Year
Despite the seasonal increase in sellers, buyers didn’t feel the same way. TREB reported 6,379 sales, a 0.35% increase from the month before. That’s about a third of the August to September jump observed last year. September’s sales still remain 35.58% lower than the same month last year. Sales volume tapers with higher prices, but inventory doesn’t normally increase as well.
Prices increased, sales dropped, and there’s more inventory. The floor of prices continues to rise, bringing composite numbers up with it. There’s still two problems – more inventory and less sales. More inventory means more selection, and therefore less pricing pressure. While that’s good news for buyers, it’s not great for price growth. As always, we’ll be breaking the market down segment by segment over the next few days.
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these charts are starting to look like the classic “anxiety” and not far behind “denial” stages of this RE cycle. Unless you truly believe we haven’t hit “Euphoria” yet…..unless real estate in Canada is different……=)
Time will tell I guess……
Re: your headline. It’s “fewer” sales, not “less” sales. If you can count it, use fewer. If it can’t be quantified, use less.
E.G. Less mess, fewer grammatical errors. 😉
Trevor, More and less are similar words and can be used as an article headlines. Grammer is very vast you need to spend 2 years to learn more about it.
I am confident I can raise big bucks for you guys regardless of spelling, amazed at your increasing fan base……lol nothing better to do? you must sell homes.
Try commercial much more lucrative…..=)
COMMERCIAL- maybe for few more months. Just wait for NAFTA finalization. We will talk after that about a deal for sure!
=)
My comments were aimed at you btw. it was the bashers who come here free……..But yes, all bets have been off since the summer……business is steady though. For now….GTA is a vacancy mosh pit. Excluding the core…..and industrial.
I’m an editor at a national news outlet, there’s something people need to understand – search trumps all. Editors are *NOT* getting dumber when they use words you wouldn’t see in academic journals, they have to write how people search so the content actually gets found.
The news industry gets a lot of crap flung at them for diminishing quality, but really it has to do with the baseline of readers becoming more dumb.
Thank you so mcuh for accurate news. I have no idea why mainstream media just saying “REBOUND” with 6% increase where the only reason for this increase is increase in the sales of $2+million houses. Even condos didn’t increase too much. Only reason people are still buying condos is because first that’s the only thing people can afford easily right now and builders are offering 5 years to 10 years rental guarantees (which to me seems a very impossible, REITS would have bought the whole building if there is such thing) because there is a great fall in sales and they are trying to keep up their sales
I’ve never heard of 5 year rental guarantees let alone 10 year. Provide specific examples of pre-construction developments that have made these offers.
can’t give you anything from online for 10 years but heard this on an advertisements on a east indian radio station-
You can find “4 year rental guarantee” on google . Why would a builder has to give rental guarantees? Why don’t government see this? Builders bringing more investors, people who really need place to live can also buy them….Canadian government really sucks!
What i feel now is government know all this but they don’t want to fix things until they get worse.
Another thing- A lot of people misused government’s 5% down primary residence plan by changing their addresses on driver’s license. Do you think government don’t know about that?
Couple of mistakes in this article Kaitlin aside from “less sales” everyone seems to be getting all worked up about! 😉
In the interactive map above the monthly changes are noted from July 2017 – it should obviously be August if it’s monthly.
Also, the first chart says Average price but then it says “composite” in brackets. It looks like you’ve charted the Composite Benchmark price here which should be noted as such – this number is not an average.
P.S. The dead cat bounce in average detached prices was of course expected in September and certainly accentuated by the unusually warm weather at the end of the September. Now we have a long and tumultuous 6 months of cooling to look forward to.
I doubt about your reason “warm weather”. Based on my analysis, only reason for this increase is some stupid wealthy people paid 3 million for 2 million dollar houses.
Other than that prices are down in all other areas in GTA for specifically for detached.
That’s funny “stupid wealthy people”…so let me guess you’re a smart poor person?
Lol… FYI- there is one more kind on the same planet you live “strategic middle class person” where i belong too