Greater Toronto’s detached real estate market made big improvements last month. Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) numbers show both prices and sales moved higher in July. While improved from last year, they haven’t returned to normal growth or volumes. Prices made a minimal move higher by the best performing measure, with suburbs doing best. Sales are up from last year’s multi-year lows, but fall short of typical July volumes.
Toronto Detached Home Prices Rise 2%
Prices for Greater Toronto detached homes climbed, according to the board’s benchmark. TREB reported a benchmark price of $943,300 in July, up 2.45% from last year. In the City of Toronto it has increased to $1,134,300, up 1.93% from last year. The increase isn’t very large (falling below CPI in Toronto), but an increase is better than a decline, right?
Toronto Detached Benchmark Price
The price of a typical detached home across the Toronto Real Estate Board, in Canadian dollars.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
The rate of price growth for the benchmark improved, but prices are still very much below the peak. Both TREB and the City saw the rate of growth rise a second consecutive month. This is the highest price growth observed since December 2018, but still isn’t all that high. TREB’s detached benchmark price remains 10.11% below the peak reached in July 2018. The City of Toronto’s detached benchmark price is doing slightly better, at 7.66% below the all-time high. The benchmark is moving, but not enough for bulls (or bears) to get excited about.
Toronto Detached Benchmark Percent Change
The 12 month percent change of a typical detached home across the Toronto Real Estate Board.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
The median sale price of a detached home increased across Greater Toronto. TREB reported the median reached $870,000 in July, up 2.95% from last year. The City of Toronto reached $960,500, up 1.10% from last year. Interesting takeaway here is the median is substantially lower than the benchmark. More than half of detached sales in TREB were at least 7.7% below the benchmark price. In the City of Toronto, over half of sales were 15.32% below the benchmark price.
Toronto Detached Average Sale Price
The average sale price of a detached house in the Toronto Real Estate Board.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
The average price does not reflect other trends by a long shot, but it does tell us a little about the suburbs. TREB reported an average price of $995,043 in July, down 9.1% from last year. Even though this trend is far detached from the other price trends, there is a common thread. Detached home prices in the 905 are performing better than those in the City of Toronto.
Toronto Detached Average Sale Price Change
The 12 month percent change of average sale price across across TREB.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
Detached Sales Rise Nearly 30%, But Still Over 11% Below Typical
Detached sales made a big leap from last year, but are still falling short of typical volumes for the month. TREB reported 3,941 detached sales in July, up a massive 29.7% from last year. The City of Toronto represented 866 of those sales, up 29.4% over the same period. Sales made a large increase, but were still 11.2% lower than the median number over the past 5-years. Impressive when you realize those five years included two prints at decade lows. Once again, this indicator improved but still hasn’t returned to normal yet.
Toronto Detached April Sales
The total number of Greater Toronto detached sales made in the month of April.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
Detached Inventory Rises In The City, Falls In The 905
The number of new listings for detached homes made a modest bump higher. TREB reported 7,558 new listings in July, up 6.63% from last year. The City of Toronto represented 1,456 of those new listings, up 6.66% from last year. Both numbers showed growth below sales volumes, so this hacked away at some inventory.
Toronto Detached Sales Vs. New Listings
The total number of detached sales, compared to the number of new detached listings per month.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
The number of active listings for detached homes fell across the board, but increased in the City. TREB reported 11,221 active listings for detached homes in July, down 3.78% from last year. The City of Toronto represented 2,074 of those active listings, up 1.22% from last year. Even though the board declined, listings in July were 21.45% higher than the 5-year median for the month. It’s not a huge amount of inventory, but huge in contrast to what the region is used to.
Toronto Active Detached Listings
The total number of detached listings available.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
The trend for detached homes shows market improvements, but it’s still far from normal. Prices are showing growth (on the strongest indicator) – but it’s minimal. Sales made a big leap from last year, but isn’t quite at typical levels. One thing that was clear is the 905 has been performing better than the City recently.
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Circling back to the forum post on Orange county, it’s interesting to see how it’s different but really the same.
For those not using the forum, Orange County sales volumes fell in 2003-2004, and everyone thought “this was it.” Then they picked up, and everyone thought it was over, risk completely subsided. Then POW, 2 of the most rapid years of sales declines followed as the global recession kicked off.
Humans won’t see risk until it bites them. This is why people are always putting down index funds, not realizing they underperform in a bull market, but often don’t lose nearly as much during a bear market.
People that are convinced they can buy in a bear market and sell in a bear market, are too delusional to understand these things without a loss.
lol – if ur ‘index fund’ is S&P 500 – and that’s the benchmark – how are u underperforming in either bull or bear market ? Ur exactly in-line. I think what u meant to say fella is active investments for the most part under-perform passive i.e. S&P 500 index
How does the benchmark have such a large discrepancy with the media sale price for detached homes? In Vancouver, it’s within one point. The median sale price for a detached home is now trading close to the benchmark of a condo?
2-10 inversion on US treasuries. Our biggest trade partner is going to hit the recession in just a few weeks.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-05/yield-curve-blares-loudest-u-s-recession-warning-since-2007
This means it’s not going to be a friendly rate cut like in 2015, it’s going to be a liquidity issue. That is, interest rates will get cut, but qualifications will most likely increase. Now we know why the BOC expanded their program. They’re trying to inject liquidity in advance, so it doesn’t look an emergency floodgate opens if the US falls into recession.
Money has to be laundered somehow. This recession isn’t going to stop global monies being parked into One Bloor or Yorkville condos.
lol – what r u talking about ? More than 80% of One Bloor isn’t sold – u can look at their website and see all the available floor plans. 95% of expensive units from floor 25 and up and not sold. Wages in Canada are tiny compared to global cities. And they’ve been trying 4 two years now to sell them – no luck with tiny Canadian salaries
The 2-10 inversion prediction is almost a whole year ahead of a real recession Jin but yeah, things are not looking good at all.
Bond yields also inverted in the UK yesterday and both the German and the UK GDP contracted in Q2 on a quarterly basis.
Basically, shit about to hit the fan on a major scale, although I really hope it’s not as bad as 2008… although one does wonder where the stimulus would come from this time! 😉
lol – the Canadian yield curve has been inverted for months now ? Where have u been fella under a rock ????
15% below a typical house? I just came back with Doc and einstein and compared to the 2003 prices are up almost 60% even 100%. In that time canada’s population has increases 20-30%, wages up 20% and cost of living is flat or down as rent, food and gas have all stayed steady…oh wait, none of that happened. Well, imma just hop in the delorean and go back to the 90s, buy me some tech stocks! BD4L.
Honk Kong exodus will help.