How Soft Are Toronto Real Estate Ask Prices This Month?

How Soft Are Toronto Real Estate Ask Prices This Month?

Toronto real estate prices are kind of wobbly, and social media has been filled with claims that places are selling substantially under ask. We thought we would look through TREB sold numbers, to see if there’s any truth to this claim. Looking at last week’s sales from Sept 2 – September 8, yes ask prices are softer than they were last year. However, they’re probably not soft enough to start screaming from the rooftop.

September 2016 Saw Sale Prices 104% of Ask

Last week’s sold to ask ratio is down from last year. In September 2016, the average sold to ask price ratio was 104%. This means homes were selling for 4% more than buyers were asking for on average. Last week’s sold data shows that sold homes fetched an average of 98.78% of the asking price, and had a median ratio of 98.33%. The average sold price shaved just over $13,600 off of the average sticker price last week.

Source: TREB.

Homes Between $750,000 – $1 million Are Going Over Ask

Not all price brackets are created equal. Homes sold with an ask price in the range of $750,000 – $1,000,000 fetched an average of 100.5% of sticker. Homes asking for less than $500k also fetched 99.28% of ask. Agents are either pricing the homes sold in this range perfectly, the buyers aren’t hagglers, or there’s still competition in these price ranges.

Sold To Ask Is Tapering Above $1,000,000

Above a million, the sale price to ask tapers much more substantially. In the $1,000,000 – $1,500,000 range, the average sold to ask is pretty close with a ratio of 98.15%. In the $3,000,000+ price range, the average sold to ask ratio is only 91.49%. The latter was only two sales last week, so don’t draw too many insights yet. However, the average of the discounts on those two sales worked out to $247,500 under ask – which is nothing to sneeze at.

Some agents are saying everything is still booming, and bears are saying the sky is falling. As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle, and we just wanted to give you a few data points. This isn’t a comprehensive analysis of sold to ask prices, but a starting point for discussion. We’ll add a price reduction analysis over the next few days, that will help with context.

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10 Comments

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  • Reply
    Fish hooks... 7 years ago

    $750k – $999k is the range where a kindly Realtor would stick a price on a unit previously priced at $1.5m and up in hopes of getting bids in the $1.3-1.5m range. See #GTAhousehunt

    • Reply
      Tommy 7 years ago

      Realtors are not pricing for bids any longer. Haven’t been for months.

  • Reply
    Bay Street Guy 7 years ago

    Breaking it down by price range is a way better idea, thanks for this.

    People get financing, find out how much they can spend, then go look for a home. They then buy one they can afford, not necessarily the one they want. Spread by type is damn near useless.

  • Reply
    Trevor 7 years ago

    This doesn’t reflect homes taken off the market when no bids materialized and then re-listed for less. Sometimes much less.

    • Reply
      AnOnlineCommenter 7 years ago

      I’d be interested to see how many people actually do that and unsure why TREB don’t make that info available. I’ve seen that info available in other markets outside Canada.

      Personally, the first time I tried to sell my first home, I took my house off the market when I didn’t get realistic offers. I didn’t put it back on the market for another 4 years and got over asking price. It’s not like everyone who puts their house on the market HAS to sell it.

  • Reply
    Milan 7 years ago

    I am following the house prices for about one year. There are two kind of sellers.
    One kind keep prices steady since may 2017. Their houses are still for sale. Others went down with the prices and their houses were sold. So it is logical that sold homes fetched an average of 98.78% of the asking price. I do not believe in bidding wars anymore or other selling tricks like to ask 25% over expecting price in hope to be able to give 25% off. This simply do not work anymore.

  • Reply
    Beh G. 7 years ago

    Thanks Kaitlin, another nice article.

    Would have been nice to see another metric in there and that would have been the average asking price for that period in 2016 versus 2017. I suspect that average asking prices were also lower which makes the drop in sell/list ratio even more significant. Of course, we will get the mid month numbers soon but would have been nice to have a head start, especially before John [Pasalis] this time! 😉

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