Toronto’s detached real estate was notoriously scarce this time last year. Numbers from the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) show that’s not the case anymore. Detached prices slid for a 7th month in a row, as sales continued to decline, and inventory soars.
Toronto Detached Real Estate Prices Are Just 2.33% Higher Than Last Year
First, let’s look at the benchmark detached, which is the price of a typical detached home. TREB reported a benchmark price of $909,300 for detached homes, a 2.33% increase compared to the same month last year. The benchmark in the City of Toronto proper is now $1,085,100, a 1.77% increase compared to last year. For a little context, the Consumer Price Index in the City of Toronto was most recently reported at 2.2%. This means detached homes are barely above the most common measure of inflation, and below in the City of Toronto. Long-term buyers would average this out with gains they’ve made, short-term flippers are screwed.
Source: TREB.
Average Sale Price Is Still Negative, But Less Negative…
The average sale price of detached homes fell across the board. TREB reported an average sale price of $989,870 across Toronto, a 2.5% decline compared to the same month last year. Breaking that down, the City of Toronto proper had an average sale price of $1,250,235, a 2.8% decline compared to last year. In the city’s suburbs, the average sale price reached $989,870, a 2.5% decline compared to last year. The average sale price is falling slightly faster in the city, than the burbs.
Source: TREB.
That sounds negative, but the decline in average sale price is softening compared to the month before. December’s monthly decline of -2.5%, is less than November’s 5.8% decline. They’re both nothing like last December’s 23.1% increase, but they’re not all that bad.
Source: TREB.
Detached Sales Decline Over 13%
Sales of detached homes fell across Greater Toronto. TREB reported 1,938 sales, a 13.6% decline compared to last year. The City of Toronto saw 454 of those detached sales, a 13.4% decline. The Greater Toronto suburbs saw the other 1,484 sales, a 13.7% decline. So that means prices down, and sales down.
Source: TREB.
One interesting thing to note is the price distribution of these sales. They fell in almost every category, but above a million seems to be where the biggest decline was located. The only segment that saw growth, were homes in the $700,000 to $799,000 range. If that’s your price point, it’ll probably be a little more difficult to get in.
Source: TREB.
Detached Listings Increase Over 230%
Complicating the decline of sales is an increase in inventory. TREB reported 3,046 new detached listings in December, a 75% increase compared to last year. The City of Toronto did slightly better, with 670 new detached listings, a 61% increase. The substantial rise in detached listings, pushed total inventory higher.
Active listings, a.k.a. listings still available at month end, rose closer to historic levels. TREB reported 7,508 active detached listings, a 237% increase from last year. The City of Toronto had 1,467 of those detached listings, a 200% increase compared to last year. If you wanted to use Realtor terms, this would technically be a “buyers market.” Although you should exercise caution on a market when prices are falling.
Lower sales and higher inventory, sent prices lower for another month, as sellers faced increased competition. One interesting point to consider is Toronto agents claimed that a rush buy before mortgage rules changed this year, increased sales. Even with the additional pressure to close, sales were significantly lower and there was little to no pricing pressure. Now that the mortgage rules have changed, we’ll likely see even less sales pressure.
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The correction is over. Detached prices are going to spike from here, look at Vancouver for reference. The small pull back made it healthier, here’s where we rip higher. Get in while you can.
That is a joke, right?
Look at Australia…
Why would it be a joke? They’ve already made a very large drop in prices. You can’t expect it to continue to drop forever. Homeowners aren’t stupid. They won’t sell for less than they paid.
In the words of Billy Crystal from the Princess Bride, “Have fun storming the castle.”… The problem with this ending is that reality is very different than fiction.
Yes, rational homeowners won’t sell for less. But make no mistake; owners with speculative intents are irrational and the only language they understand is recoup what they can when they can. At some point, speculators won’t care about whether they help drive down prices as long as THEY take cover from losses or fallout from any new rules.
Eventually, they may regroup and come back in when they have a workaround for the newly proposed system.
I don’t think home owners are stupid, but real estate agents who persuaded people repeatedly telling, “this a balanced market, prices are keep going up, and better to get into the market” look much more smarter. ALWAYS, DO YOUR HOMEWORK….
Don’t feed the trolls….
I sold my condo outside of Vancouver in March, it went up 20% by July 🙁
Charles, thanks for reminding us all how fucked up Van pricing is. I bet it was up 50% by year end right? And it will only keep doubling every 2 years…you’ve cracked the code.
You should sell everything you have to get into the market in any way. Better yet, go to all of your relatives and extract as much cash as possible (shit, their houses are doubling to so no one is losing). Then, when you send out the carrier pigeons with the sell password (hint: it’s donut) we can ALL sell and be rich, with the minimum point of entry for vancouver @ $2M for a 500 square foot condo. That’s a steal compared to London or Manhattan. Plus, wait for it, the price is ONLY going to go up. Better not miss out.
Did you think you were going to pick the very top? Is anything less than selling at the very top of the market a total failure? If you owned that condo for a few years, you did just fine. Nobody can pick the exact top or bottom. Toronto peaked in March or April, but that was not evident then. Many hung on expecting the gains to continue. Oops. I’d rather get out too soon than too late.
You sir have no idea what you are talking about! Not a rational thinker! People will sell and justify it any way they can! Housing market will come down heavy, When? Cant say but with all the factors ie interest rate hike and taxing foreign buyers and Canadian being over extended…its happening! Forget this fomo mentallity.
I don’t agree with you. When the listing spikes and sales decline, the common sense says price decline is coming.
The inventory is going to crush this market, especially when the B-20 impact runs its course. You would have to be a moron to buy today. Ask your Realtor when they bought, and where. Most young Realtors own in a condo, if they own at all. They know the money is in commission, not the home.
Most young realtors own a condo, only because they can’t afford a house. It’s not savvy financial strategy, it’s their bank account that dictates what they’ve bought. lol
Still early. Need a full quarter and ideally a period of activity, like spring market, to understand what is happening. Historically there will be a decline, then money dumps in thinking there is a deal, a spike occurs never higher than the peak…whether it flat lines, increases or trends downwards is based on the fundamentals of the market. Even if 2018 is ok, the pain is coming.
Regardless, the fact is that many in Southern ontario are house poor and it is only getting worse…money doesn’t grow on trees and as discretionary income is hit we can be led into a recession. Either our wages need to go up considerably in the short term or pricing needs to come down.
What is interesting is that prices have been coming down but there is limited to no media coverage. That is the key; herd psychology. Wait until every day the media is covering this and not just small blogs.
We’ll see. BD4L
Conspiracies aside, I think the lack of media coverage is from a lack of media understanding.
Reporters are paid to write and produce, not to study economic trends. So with HPI and average selling prices being ‘normal’ there is nothing interesting to report… even though trends suggest otherwise.
This is why I love Better Dwellings reporting.
Like you pointed out, only time will tell. But let’s not forget that the Toronto market appears to prove us wrong all the time, with the help of speculative activities and irrationality of some buyers who ordinarily shouldn’t be in the market. Problem is, when it finally reaches a point of diminishing return, no one knows what price point the market will eventually moderate at. It’s not a question of if, it’s when – that’s the scary part (could be a year, 2, 5, 10 years before it happens, but who knows?).
When I bought my house 6-7 years ago prices had gone up 50% in a couple of years. Paying $500K for a semi on the subway seemed crazy. Prices inched upwards and then exploded in 2016. Now the house is worth $900K. As the city prices people out, everything radiated outwards to the suburbs. So, lets say realistically Southern Ontario has been in a bull run in real estate for a decade. Not 2 years like everyone likes to suggest.
There has been build up. Have we hit the top? Maybe. Maybe not.
There really were 2 different markets in Toronto: freehold homes and condos. This article didn’t address the better side of the December market. Overall condos were the winner in real estate in 2017 and was largely driven by the sub-$600K price point of which there are much fewer freeholds in this price range within the 416.
Those who have owned a condo for the past several years and had thoughts of buying a home will find that the price gap has shrunk enough to enable a possible move up in size thanks to sizeable equity in their condo. Provided they can handle the mortgage payments and are willing to move outside of downtown Toronto.
The detached housing market way overshot last spring and any comparisons made for the next 4 or 5 months are surely going to be negative. There will be lots of noise in the media about real estate, but those who aren’t frozen with fear will be able to seize buying opportunities just as there were in late 2008/early 2009.
I expect no less than more doom and gloom in the media as the real estate industry expects a 35% to 40% decline in sales volume and overall single digit price growth for the 2018 year.
Then again, I felt that 2009 was the end of the housing boom, as did many other realtors, yet people on the sidelines waiting for a correction jumped in when houses pulled back up to 10%. We could see the same happen in 2018. It’s just way too soon to make any predictions where things are going to head.
What are the fundamentals supporting the runs the market has had? I guess that’s the one million dollar question. If the market is healthy, it’s all well and good for everyone.
Money markets still forecasting 2 more rate hike this year. That means OFSI stress test could almost be 6%
RE will be crushed first 1/2 of year and I think OFSI will have to remove stress test later on as it becomes overkill past 6% in a drowning market.
Bullish outlook past this IMO as prices should correct substantially another -10-20% and affordability improves.
Thank you for bringing Al back to reality. I disagree that the government will reverse course, especially within a 12 month period. We’d have to be in full out recession for them to change their tune and they wouldn’t eliminate the stress test directly but just lower rates. This won’t play out over 2 quarters either, that would be a complete crash more or less.
The stress test is to save us from ourselves and limit the pain that will come in the next through 2018-2019 .
Or everything will be fine. Who knows :0)
OSFI made the move to protect the banks from themselves. They are the bank regulator, not the housing regulator. Their job is to ensure the stability of federally regulated financial institutions, not the housing market. (Note, I said ‘stability’, not profits. Banks might well take a hit to their bottom line if housing corrects, but OSFI won’t concern itself with that.) They aren’t going to ease up on their mandate to help homeowners. That ain’t their bailiwick.
Interest rates were going down at that time and now they are going up.
No Way!
Condos are now max’d out as the prices have grown to a point where it no longer makes any sense. There may be a little gas left in that tank, but it’s definitely on ‘E’! Between the price of the condo and the $5-800 per month condo fee, you might as well buy a house (at a stupid price).
The fundamentals are just not there to push this market any longer. The avg family income can no longer come close to affording to stay in this high stakes game. ‘Game’ is the key word because these prices should never have hit this point, and if you you take a step back and look at what house you’re getting for these asking prices, you’ll either fell sick to your stomach or break out laughing.
Getting back to the point, the crazy market needs locals to be able to afford it as speculators can’t run this game on their own.
There may be a ‘dead cat bounce’ if prices drop a bit, but there’s no way it can last. The government never really needed to step in, as this would have happened anyway.
Welcome back 1992!
Yuuuppp…once the native money dies, the speculators have already left and because they helped jack the prices up they can ‘sell for a loss’ as so many call it on this site…pssstt, guess what, they got in early and it isn’t a loss, it s 100-300% profit. it is only a loss for the natives who watch housing prices correct downwards and then take a decade to rebound.
Yes. That’s why so many Canadians are on the brink of bankruptcy. Pumping and dumping penny stocks is illegal, but foreign speculators fucking up an entire housing market is apparently ok. Throw out the term racist or xenophobic and your home free. Too bad that the continued fall out will be on our economy as a whole. It’s not a coincidence that our economy grew at the same time as our debt load and mortgage refinancing. It can’t continue, and it won’t. Sad really, but not one person can say they weren’t warned, it’s been in the news enough the past few years. Pay down your debt, and not by refinancing or taking on a different form of debt. My personal prediction is that we will see the sale of homes as a means of getting out of debt, as b20 has made refinancing almost impossible. Unmanageable debt, and no equity left in homes will be what bursts the Canadian housing bubble.
We can’t blame foreign speculators for our effed up housing market. They just jumped in after the fact (with the possible exception of Vancouver). Here’s the thing about foreign speculators – they are only interested in buying things that go up in price. If Canadian homebuyers and homeowners weren’t so gleefully playing along all these years – I’m talking bidding wars and house porn and Bank of Mom & Dad and all that – the foreign buyers would have found a new and more profitable playground years ago.
The other thing people don’t realize is that foreign money is hot on the way in, and hot on the way out. You think foreign buyers are going to step in to buy more in a falling market? A few might. But far more of those who already own will cut their losses and put their property up for sale. To a foreign investor or speculator, a house that is no longer rising in price is useless to them. They will dump that thing on the market just as easily as they bought it. I don’t think it is at all reasonable to expect that foreign buyers will prevent prices from falling. More likely that foreign owners who become sellers will accelerate the correction.
Vancouver.
You can still get a detached house in Toronto for under $600K. In Vancouver you would pay $1.4 million MINIMUM for something that is livable..ish on a busy street in the far corners of the city. Wages there are lower, and far less job prospects.
My house in Toronto is 1600sq feet and worth 10-20% less than my parent’s 1200 sq ft bungalow in Langley which is a good 50KM from the city with no decent transit (buses only).
Back in 2011 when houses on the east side of Vancouver were hitting $800K everybody thought those buyers were idiots and it could not possibly go any higher. Those houses are now worth close to two million.
The market CAN reach another level of stupid. What we need is stability – gains and drops are detrimental. Flat prices or inflation-type growth would be ideal.
There is no stability from this point. We missed that bus 15 years ago. There can only be stability after a substantial and painful correction. And you’re quite right – markets have proven time and again that they are capable of reaching whole new levels of stupid. Just because things are stupid now does not mean they can’t get stupider. Who knows where the top is? Or if we’ve already reached it.
If anyone wants to see what a previously hot, now pronounced dead market looks like, have a look at the Zolo sales/listing stats for West Vancouver . https://www.zolo.ca/west-vancouver-real-estate/trends. At 3 sales in the past 30 days, they are facing 114 months of inventory.
After a decade of slaving away and saving, I’ve finally have enough cash to buy a detached home for my young family (no help from bank of mom and dad). Unfortunately now, I am seriously scared stiff that I’m going to catch a falling knife if we buy this year. Not to sound like a jerk, but I have zero interest in saving the day for a spec buyer that helped make my life a ball of stress for the past several years. If you were in my shoes what would you do right now? Looking for some sage advice from informed veterans who have lived through down cycles before?
@prospective buyer
Are you looking to buy in the GTA?
I would start and get ready to buy this spring , the headline YOY and media is going to be brutal- this works in your favour since it will be a buyer’s market and sentiment will be low. It looks like people are struggling to sell their homes as DOM increases. Use this to your advantage, you can get a good deal compared to what people paid last year and likely save 6 figures. Expect that you can’t time the market but it could continue to go down- or not.
A family member bought in 1990 peek and that was the worse time. Took more than 12 years to come back. But to this day, they paid home off within that time and still have it. Annual return is not high, but still better than renting. Now they are going to sell and use for retirement. Beats renting today now rents are up like 30% in some cases because of Ontario fair housing act.
@jungle
Yes looking in the GTA and we’re renting now! Thanks this is good advice. If we stretch under the new B20 rules, we are in the $1.5m price range. We feel more comfortable at sub 1.3m price points though. We just want a decent school district in a decent neighborhood and it already seems that quite a few listings that fit our requirements.. but tha nagging thought of our first home purchase being under water the day we move is extremely frightening.. especially given the dollars we are talking about here. I wonder how many people are in my shoes.. I can’t imagine there is that many since my wife and i are pretty strong earners and savers; the combination of which, really doesn’t seem to be the norm around town.
Be careful asking for advice online. It is unfortunate but there are plenty of “Good Samaritans” who would be happy to tell you what to do with your hard-earned money, and your and your family well-being will be the least of their concern.
Your unwillingness to catch a falling knife bailing out specuvestors is a good starting point. Ultimately, you would have to make up your own mind and proceed accordingly. Thanks to Better Dwelling there is plenty of quality information on the subject available for everyone to read. I would suggest starting with the three-part analysis and forecast series published a few months ago here. Spoiler alert: their model shows that the market will bottom around 2021 and they seem to be not alone pointing to this timeframe.
And BTW, here is where Canadian economy stands after this real estate party. The numbers are staggering and absolutely unsustainable:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-18/-hyper-leveraging-risks-bank-of-canada-policy-error-macquarie
I am not qualified to offer advice, but I was in your same shoes and had (still have) the same fears as you.
How is your rental situation? I re-located to the GTA in late 2015 and my first apartment was nice. The landlord kicked us out so her daughter could move in, and it was very tough to find another place. We had to settle for City Place which was horrible, and there was no way I was extending my lease. Again, finding another place to rent was horribly difficult. I bought mid-late May and prices were dropping fast, so I put in what I thought was a low offer (10-15% below comps) and won, without really expecting to but the market changed quick.
I have three times the square feet and am infinitely happier in my house. The cost per month isn’t too much more than what I was paying, and I built in safety nets so I could comfortably afford my place up to about 7% interest rates. Even then, I made sure to get a place with a basement suite & separate entrance just in case I needed to rent it out (in a worse case scenario). I do fear going under water, but I will cross that bridge (no pun intended) if I get there.
So my advice would be to plan for the worst. We qualified on half my salary and I purchased $100K below that. I did not purchase for financial reasons – I do not expect prices to go up. It was a lifestyle decision for me.
You made all the right choices based on your life and what you wanted. You bought at a good time. You implemented your own version of a stress test and live within your limits. More of you please.
Read the Book the Wealthy Renter. This will put things into great perspective for many reader on this site. Its cheap, a quick read, and written by a well educated person in both the real estate markets and the the stock market.
-I’ll keep this post short, as last time they didn’t post my comment on the site.
If you live in your house and want to live in it over 20-30 years it is what it is.
If you view housing as an investment then, like any investment, there is risk.
It is really that simple.
My one bit of advice is to neither ask nor take advice from random strangers online. Myself included.
Yours truly,
Random Stranger Online
I’m actually in a very similar situation. My wife and I currently rent but will need to move in the next 8 months. We will qualify to buy something around the $1.4 million mark. We don’t have kids yet, although we’re planning to start trying soon.
We both want to own a house for lifestyle reasons. That said, we don’t want to risk losing our equity. I’m probably as informed as anyone about the market (I’m not in the industry, but I’m an obsessive market watcher), and I’d guess that a price decline of 10% over the next 12 months is the likeliest scenario.
Our current plan is to retain a realtor, prepare to place bids in May or June when B-20 starts to bite, but content ourselves with finding another rental if we can’t buy something that’s fairly valued from our perspective. This Summer could be a great buying opportunity, but it probably won’t — housing corrections take time.
I would wait until the rate rises stop and we have to start dropping rates a couple of times due to recession. That will be near enough to the bottom – it may still over correct at that point but you are likely in the ball park. At this point people’s borrowing power will start increasing again. Take a variable rate mortgage at that time so your rate will decrease the worse our economy gets.
It’s obviously very difficult to predict the long term direction of the market, especially with so many things changing so quickly and the market having had very little time to absorb these changes.
The normal historical trend (excluding last year’s crazy and one-off spike) is for prices to drop in the winter. There is obviously more headwinds this year than there have been historically (with interest rate hikes, the new mortgage stress tests, record debt to income ratios and with 1/3rd of Canadians saying they can’t afford paying their monthly bills and nearly half being within a $200 buffer according to the recent MNP poll).
So, the prudent thing for at least the next 3 months is to wait it out. There is historically a pick-up in RE sales and prices in early Spring (April) and one would assume the same trend will repeat this year. Some potential headwind working against this would the speculators that purchased real estate last January to April… I know quite a few and they all got 1 year mortgages. This group is under water, will not be able to refinance and will be forced to sell their homes. For that reason, there may be a HUGE spike in listings in April that will more than offset the pick up in demand.
Again, almost impossible to predict the trends ahead of time but most real estate bust cycles anywhere in the world last years (5-10 years from peak to trough). Assuming that Toronto is a one-off case and will not be subject to the same rules and trends that play out elsewhere is the reason many people have lost 20% or more equity in their homes in just 8 months.
On that note, my advice is to keep doing your research, keep reading articles from various sources and more importantly read all of TREB’s releases and do your own analysis with charts and tables rather than just reading the headlines. Delve deep into the numbers and at some point you will be comfortable and confident that you’re not catching a falling knife. This is when you make your move.
wait few months
It appears the detach sales are down and listing ups for the entire GTA, some areas worse than others. Also it’s trending WORSE. And most past the 3 months of inventory. A few areas now are almost at 10+ months of inventory. If that keeps up, you can expect a pretty significant correction (or crash) to occur.
And remember, there’s always the widow, retired, elderly or divorce that DO have to sell.
Jungle…hit it on the head with your last point. In fact the entire post was gold. Gold Jerry!
The rumor out there is that the Toronto RE market is going to skyrocket once again, wait for it… because of the Chinese New Year! 😉
Yes, talking to stakeholders in the Toronto RE market these days is more or less like talking to a crazy person in a white padded room… sadly, dealing with the fallout of this mess for these people will be very much like the 5 stages of grief in psychology and we are just in the denial stage.
Outside the padded room and the small bubbles many Torontonians have created for themselves, the average price of a detached home in the city of Toronto dropped another $26k in December, compared to the month before. That’s a
* $105k drop in price from September’s “dead cat bounce” peak or 7.7% in just 3 months.
* $328k drop in price from April’s peak or 20.8% in 8 months.
Interestingly enough both metrics suggest an average 2.5% drop in prices per month. Back at the white padded room, talk is of the resilient Toronto RE market that has weathered the storm and will once again rise from the ashes like the Phoenix… pardon the pun, I meant Vancouver!
For all intents and purposes, Toronto’s RE market is exactly where Spain’s was in June 2007… prices had been falling for months but shit hadn’t hit the fan and the general population was in denial… we all know how that went down.
Speaking of which, exactly a decade later Spain is just now coming off its trough in inflation adjusted terms and it will likely be another 5 to 10 years before it hits its 2007 peak levels in inflation adjusted terms – very much like the bust and boom cycle that Toronto went through between 1989 and 2006.
Needless to say, the prudent investment decision at this point is to dump Toronto RE and purchase Spanish RE… an average detached home in Toronto still buys 3 nice detached villas – down from 4 in April -in Costa Blanca North (one you can live in and 2 you can let out to tourists for steady income).
That’s beside the non-investment decisions that you’ll have a MUCH higher quality of life here with a MUCH lower cost of living with access to superior healthcare, infrastructure, culture, sports, architecture and gastronomy, and with the rest of Europe at your door step.
We sold in March, moved here in June and is has been the best decision of our lives. Visited Toronto for the holidays and couldn’t wait to get back after the second day! Don’t even know how we lasted there as long as we did.
If anyone needs any info or help to make the dream a reality – made very easy by Spain’s Golden Visa programs – feel free to reply to this with an e-mail address. Cheers!
The rental vacancy rate in Toronto is the lowest ever. The rental market is crazy. Multiple offers for a small two-bedroom rental apartment. A lot of people used to buy properties and rent them really cheap because the price would go up not because rental income can compensate the costs. If detached home prices are not going up as much as before then it doesn’t worth to buy and rent. This means the rent will go up even further because of less supply. That is why detached home prices are not going up as much as they did before but condo and apartments price are going up. Condo rent went up more than 10 percent last year so people are still buying condos just to rent them. This is nothing to do with foreign buyers. Investors used to but detached homes and condos to rent but now they buy mostly condos. I think if the governments can’t solve the rent issue, a lot of young people can’t afford to buy or even rent anymore.
too many condos have been built. There is oversupply.
You can have shortage of land but not of condos. Investors bought condos and created artificial shortage and builders jumped in started building tons of condos. Now investors have stepped back. Time for crash.
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