Toronto detached real estate buyers still haven’t warmed up to (slightly) lower prices. Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) numbers show price growth continued to decelerate in February. The deceleration was the result of recession levels of sales, and a multi-year high. Prices are close to the same point as last year, with a deteriorating ratio of buyers to inventory.
Toronto Detached Real Estate Prices Are Down Over 10% From Peak
The price of a typical detached home in Toronto is off by less than a point from last year. TREB’s typical detached home hit $907,200 in February, down 0.57% from the same month last year. The City of Toronto benchmark reached $1,096,100, up 0.56% from last year. Greater Toronto detached home prices haven’t done a whole lot compared to last year. Actually, they’re around the same price they were two years ago.
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 annual pace of price growth continues to decelerate. Detached homes in both TREB and the City of Toronto are seeing declines in growth from the month before. Detached homes across TREB are down 13.55% from the peak hit in May. The City of Toronto is down 10.77% from the peak hit in the same month.
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 was a little more mixed. TREB reported a median sale price of $842,500 in February, up 0.17% from last year. The City of Toronto median sale price reached $1,040,000, up 3.94% from last year. Lower median sale prices in the suburbs dragged the region lower.
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 sale price of detached homes across Greater Toronto experience low growth at best. TREB had an average sale price of $980,914 in February, down 2.1% from the same month last year. The City of Toronto average detached sale price reached $1,294,936, up 0.8% from last year. The average sale price isn’t great for determining how much a home costs. Instead it’s a better indicator of the direction of money.
Toronto Detached Average Sale Price Change
The 12 month percent change of average sale price across across TREB.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
Toronto Detached Real Estate Sales Are Flat, Falling In The 905
Toronto detached real estate sales are showing weak performance. TREB reported 2,171 sales in February, up 0.09% from last year – 2 sales more than last year. The City of Toronto represented 470 of those sales, down 9.6% from last year. Last year represented the fewest sales since 2009, which is far from a sales recovery.
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.
Detached Inventory Hits A Multi-Year High
The number of new listings for detached homes across Greater Toronto fell. TREB reported 5,053 new listings in February, down 9.05% from last year. The City of Toronto represented 1,038 of those listings, down 8.46% from last year. Fewer new listings had little impact on total inventory, as much of it stagnated.
The total number of detached homes listed for sale are near at a multi-year high for the month. TREB reported 7,931 active listings in February, up 1% from last year. The City of Toronto represented 1,500 of those listings, up 3.23% from last year. The number of active listings for detached homes is the highest for February going back to as least 2012.
Toronto Active Detached Listings
The total number of detached listings available.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
The Greater Toronto detached real estate market is much cooler than it’s been over the past few years. Prices are stagnating, and sales are at recession level lows. Meanwhile, inventory is building to highs we haven’t seen in more than half a decade.
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FYI: 2 years of price stagnation, means the issue is bigger than B-20.
Correct take. Even if you think foreign money launderers were the issue, and now they’re not because China’s economy is crashing and they’re restricting outflows to Toronto, prices are not sustainable with local incomes. They run the risk of raising wages beyond natural flow now, which would weaken the dollar and cause inflation.
But you know… your house is worth the same price. You’re just going to default because your cost of is priced in USD, from oil to imports.
Your house just turned into a tomb if you’re stretched to the max. This is why B-20 is just good policy. Banks are protected, homeowners have extra money to absorb the shock of higher payments and/or loss of equity.
Remember, sometimes you have to top up equity if a market corrects the value of your unit.
Anyone that bought an asset with 50% appreciation over two years, is a clown if they think they they’re making money on that.
Even New York City’s biggest runs wiped out almost half of the value gained shortly after, stagnated for years before finally rising. Now with ultra low rates, they’re finding it impossible to rise beyond the previous peak, because the economy is just vanity stimulus metrics.
Up in Aurora, I’m seeing less listings than “usual” , what ever that means. The recent comps might be scaring people from listing. If you need to sell, and put the right price, it will sell < 3 weeks. Some buyers are around.
Most listings however, seem to have F-U pricing so its easy to understand why these offerings are going nowhere fast.
Based on what I’m reading on a Vancouver Twitter feed, sounds like Toronto isn’t there yet, but might be soon. The prices people are asking over there are still in the 2016/early 2017 range. It’s almost like some people didn’t notice a drop.
I guess a lot of people have life happen and they can’t exactly follow the details of the market, but it sure seems odd out in Vancity. 2 houses beside each other; one sold for say 1.5 mil a few months back and the other is on the market for 3.5 mil. Unless the 3.5 mil house has its interior make of gold, they looked about equal. Just makes no sense.
I’m seeing lower priced homes in Durham sell pretty quickly. Those mid to high tier homes seem to be sitting. I’ll be curious to see March inventory levels but it’s looking lower then I hoped.
The housing price needs to come down 50% or Toronto will have no future. High taxes and high housing cost will hollow out young talent pool very quick. What’s left are boomers and non competitive people. How will Canada support their boomers and health care without young skilled workers?
All skilled professionals should have a exit plan out of Canada if the housing prices don’t come back down to 2014 levels which is 50% of current price.
a decline over the next few years of 50% isn’t at all out of the question, that’s what happened in the early 90s.
who knows with govt policy, but interest rates at this level, they fell to these levels during the Great Depression, not exactly a good sign, we could be in for a rough ride.
Actually, in Toronto it is out of the question. House prices have not dropped to half their prices since at least 1973-ish. Take a look at the historic housing prices graph at the following link:
https://precondo.ca/toronto-real-estate-prices
I’m firmly in disbelief of the, “It’s different this time” crowd. BUT, dropping half has also not happened, based on historic records, so there’s nothing to make me think, “We’re different this time.”
It’ll drop (and has), just not 50% from height.
I tend to agree Joseph; will we ever have the average SFH come down to $500k in toronto/EY? Not likely but I believe it could come down to the $750-850K range over the course of 2 years. One of the problems I have with the belief that housing can’t ‘collapse’, i.e. drop below $1M = 30-40% decline from peak, is that we’re not looking at the quality of housing. While a nicely renovated detached with a garage and a bit of green space in a ‘good’ neighborhood can command top dollar, say $1.1-1.4M the current ‘price floor’ that is being held onto like Wonka’s golden ticket does not reflect the current, and future, reality. Every shell/house/shack in the west end or in a ‘trendy’ neighborhood isn’t worth, by default, high-six-to-seven figures. There is no market in the world where it is common to buy garbage for $1M and then have to dump a quarter millie into it…not NY, CHI, BOS or anywhere, well maybe London, UK but the brits are retarded as a culture and exemplify a disgusting FOMO…sorry, not sorry. The music has stopped and there aren’t enough chairs left; no more cash, no more credit resulting in liquidity being goosed and this vicious cycle continues until we hit a bottom. Could take a year or two but watch what happens when we hit a recssion; oh how the paper people fill flee from the flames. Tock. BD4L.
I tend to agree, an across the board drop of a third is more like like it, like many Toronto areas last time around. But in a bunch of mid-town Toronto areas prices bottomed out at 50% lower than peak in the 90s .
I bought a detached in the 90s trough, and while there were a fair number of properties for sale, the quality was as you say abysmal …. falling apart, one had a neighbour that ran a kennel for what appeared to be attack dogs. Stank to high heaven. Finding a decent affordable place to buy or rent in Toronto has always been hard work.
” House prices have not dropped to half their prices since at least 1973-ish.” end quote….this is what you just said…So this question is still in play; it may just take longer than a few years..
Of course the question is still in play. I was commenting on VNM, not on Zenity. My comment has nothing to do with Zenity’s question.
As for the historic data, I didn’t have time to dig for data. 1973 is the best I could find off the hop. That equates to multiple generations.
ANYTHING can happen. But there’s extremely solid evidence (for my liking) that it won’t.
“Between 1989 and 1996 average price of a house in GTA have declined by 40% adjusted for inflation or $182,625 in today’s money. Downtown of Toronto was hit the worst with over 50% decline in value of a home.”
Struggling as to whether I should buy a luxury forever home at the Avenue Wilson area for what I would consider is about 400K less than it would be about 1yr ago or 1.5yrs ago (~2.3M). I am fearful of a bigger correction but need to buy in the nexts 1yr due to a growing family. Would hold the property for 20yrs likely. Any advice? I am nauseous thinking about such a large purchase and I’ve been looking for +1yr and can’t pull the trigger on anything due to anxiety around the purchase. Wife loves it and is ready to make the move, Im uneasy but likely will always be uneasy about such a large purchase.
Greater Vancouver’s housing market has diverged on two distinct …. by building more units of this property type throughout Greater Sudbury
sudbury housing market