It’s been two years since Toronto’s detached real estate market peaked, and it’s not quite back to normal yet. Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) numbers show prices made a small move higher in May. Rising prices are still significantly below the peak reached a couple years ago. Generally speaking, the market did see higher sales and lower inventory. However, those numbers need a little unpacking to understand.
Detached Real Estate Prices Rise Less Than A Point
The price of a typical detached home made a small increase across Greater Toronto. TREB reported the benchmark reached $939,300 in May, up 0.83% from last year. The City of Toronto benchmark reached $1,113,600, up 1.09% from last year. The small increase is lower than the rate of CPI, but a gain is better than a decline.
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 growth for prices is shrinking compared to the month before. Both the TREB and City of Toronto saw the 12 month rate of growth for their benchmarks fall. Across Greater Toronto, prices are down 10.48% from the peak reached two years ago. One month of smaller growth doesn’t necessarily mean the trend to lower growth has returned. It does warrant keeping an eye on it, since it was only the third positive print in a row.
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 made similar moves last month. TREB’s median sale price reached $885,000 in May, up 1.72% from last year. In the City of Toronto it reached $1,054,500, down 1.70% from last year. The median sale price isn’t adjusted for size or quality, so it’s not directly comparable to the “typical” home used. However the median sale price does show more than half of homes were sold 5.78% and 5.30% lower than 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 sale price of detached homes moved in a similar range to the benchmark and median sale price. TREB’s average sale price reached $1,042,218 in May, up 1.10% from last year. The City of Toronto average sale price reached $1,384,993, up 1.46% from last year. The average sale price is easily skewed by distribution, so it’s not great for determining how much you’ll pay. Instead it should be used to help determine the movement of dollar flow.
Toronto Detached Average Sale Price Change
The 12 month percent change of average sale price across across TREB.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
Toronto Detached Sales Spike Higher, Still 2nd Fewest In 10 Years
Greater Toronto detached sales bounced from last year’s abrupt low. TREB reported 4,649 sales in May, up a massive 25.10% from last year. The City of Toronto represented 1,180 of those sales, up 30.38% from last year. Even with the huge leap in sales, the number is 8.84% lower than the 10-year median for the month. This was the second fewest sales since 2010. Sales are improving, but nowhere near normal volumes have returned.
Toronto Detached May Sales
The total number of Greater Toronto detached sales made in the month of May.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
Detached Inventory Rises In City, Falls In The 905
The number of new listings increased across Greater Toronto. TREB reported 10,681 new listings in May, up 3.62% from last year. The City of Toronto represented 2,489 of those listings, up 10.96% from last year. The increase in new listings had a bigger impact on total inventory in the City than the 905.
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 total inventory for the month was mixed. TREB reported 12,390 active listings in May, down 0.91% from last year. The City of Toronto represented 2,468 of those listings, up 7.02% from last year. Greater Toronto’s active listings for detached homes is up 24.41% from the median number over the past 5 years. Only 5 years of active listings data for detached homes was available for analysis.
Toronto Active Detached Listings
The total number of detached listings available.
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
The detached market experienced rising prices, higher sales, and lower inventory – but there was a few catches. Prices moved higher, but the growth was minimal and tapered from the previous month. Sales made a huge jump, but as even the board notes – they fell short of a typical May. Inventory is slightly lower, but in the City of Toronto it made a significant jump. Quite a few positive indicators, but also quite a few that fall short.
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*trawls through data*
But mai condo’s gonna go up forever.
Same trend with foreign investment in Canadian businesses. It’s up temporarily, but in a longer term down trend since 2013.
https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/jack-mintz-heres-why-investment-into-canada-isnt-the-happy-story-ottawas-telling
Of course, when markets are run on emotion, the facts aren’t as important as mass perception. You know, until it does – since markets always correct to fundamentals.
What fundamentals?
Canadian Boomers will do anything to prop up the real estate market even if it means allowing illegal money from money laundering to set shop in Toronto real estate.
Outside forces can lead a surge in pricing (think about ticket scalping) but in the end, it all comes down to fundamentals my friend. There is always a top, how much it falls and where it settles is another matter. Boomers have little power in maintaining the market as liquidity falls and incomes, if we hit a recession, fall. Banks are putting up safe guards because they understand what comes next. Unless these Boomers are also holding massive amounts of cash and will keep pumping up the market then.
Dane’s point is correct; the psychology of the market after the initial surge will continue on as FOMO takes over but the originators of the surge don’t want to take a loss and have/are exiting.
Tock. BD4L.
A couple of points from crazy is still crazy.
Sure, but $100k+ discount is a nice treat for waiting two years. Especially if we get a recession and drop in rates. I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank with my 2% 10 years fixed.
Real estate “investors” that think a 10% loss is a “couple of points” clearly wouldn’t even understand cap rates. A “couple of points” is the difference between a profitable long term real estate investment, and subsidizing a renter because a guy at a Pitbull conference told you they aren’t making any more land.
This is fucking hilarious and on point. Where have you been all my life? Tock. BD4L.
OK, but Pitbull was GREAT at that conference though.
Sounds like someone is still bitter about buying that K-car in the 80’s. A week in you knew, it was going to take thousands more from you, constantly disappoint you, and there was nothing you could do about it. Nobody would buy your lemon. You either kept it or sold it at a 50% loss.
Nothing’s a sure thing in life. Nothing.
Time for Generation Y and Z to celebrate! Popping champagne for the current 19+ crowd who have to work for free while the Baby Boomer manager gets to pocket 50% increases in pay every five years.
#Toronto, #work for free# interns #30k OSAP debt #Ted Rogers # Work for free generation # $1800 a month rent to rent in Scarborough & North York, # Wealthy Boomers
Who’s working for free? Millennials are making 10x what their parents did. If you buy into Boomer scalping condos to you, you deserve the financial hit.
Everyone seems to forget that prices boomed from 2015 to 2017, and then fell. You’ll be able to buy a detached on the west end for cheaper than a condo soon, because of poorly set expectations.
Bluimpala,
I sure hope so. It’s a shame that when Boomers were completing high school, they would afford their homes working in a factory, but working as a Professor doesn’t guarantee a home these days.
These entitled Boomers would have paid $25,000 back in the 1980s for a bungalow in Leslieville or Leaside, and they have become wealthier as those homes are now selling for 2.5 million and being flipped to unsavory elements in organized crime.
Ever heard of internships? Ryerson University and Humber College are notorious for this.
Many of us Gen Y and Z pray for a real estate collapse in Toronto. Baby Boomers weren’t doing work for free jobs after graduating Grade 8, but Boomers are angered that students studying in Humber, Seneca, Centennial, Ryerson, UofT and other post-secondary institutions are fed up that the only jobs in their field are work for free.
LOL Millennials are not making 10x what their parents did. And if you adjust for inflation, they are earning far less. AND if you compare income to cost of living, they are so far behind the Boomers (at the same age) they’re practically in a different galaxy.
I don’t say this with any bitterness. Nobody can control one’s year of birth. Boomers and early Gen-X had the luckiest birth years (in Canada anyway) likely in the past thousand years. I have no problem with them using that luck to amass incredible wealth. But let’s not pretend that Millennials have the same advantages. They don’t, not even close. And no, there won’t be a massive transfer of wealth from Boomer parents to Millennial children because the Boomers will spend it all, possibly out of spite.
It is truly remarkable how boomers are getting away with this. Never before in history has anyone had to start at the bottom of an organization and work their way up. Also, university and college co-op placements used to pay enough to purchase a house anywhere in the country.
Boomers are taking advantage of the situation of us poor millennials. It makes me sad to think I have to prove myself in my field before I’m given a large salary and able to purchase a home or condo. It makes me sick to think I actually have to work hard and save in order to set myself up for success. It’s depressing.
Welp. Back to my PlayStation where I can relax, chat and have fun with my peers, smoke weed, and complain about everything being so awful.
Stop trolling. What is coming soon and will persist for the boomers is going to go down in history as the biggest clusterfuck in Canada in half a century.
Old white guys who think they are owed something by society are about to lose their pension and their housing equity in one classic fleecing. The generation is full of half-retards who more or less lucked out during a growth period extending over 4 decades.
If you’re 60+ and not doing incredibly well you’re just another piece of walking dog food that is getting gobbled up by me and my ilk. If anything the younger generation, 18-30, is already showing they are resilient and hard working and a hell of a lot smarter. I can’t say the same for 80% of the old people I meet. They spend more time focusing on basically every distraction that comes up. Like a cat with a fucking lazer pen. Tock. BD4L.
Keep dreaming. CAD will be slaughtered in order to save pensions and maintain property values.
It’s funny how so many of you have a bias towards predicting a ‘great reset’, costing a generation (boomers) everything. A generation that helped raise millenials, what a thankful bunch.
It’s not going to happen. Losses will be socialized. This isn’t the USA circa 2006-2009. Get over it.
By the way – I am a millennial who works very hard and I do quite well. The writing is on the wall. Keep doing what you do, you obviously have time for it. But do stop spreading fud, it doesn’t look good on you.
If you want to make smart moves ensure your investments are not in CAD and maybe even think about leaving the country to avoid the oncoming massive tax burden required to pay for Canadian entitlements.
Underated comment.
This is the alternative to a price crash a complete currency devaluation which is already happening.
However, we can look at the idiot bankers in australia (similar sized commodity econ) for a third scenario. Currency collapse and housing crash simultaneouly, and happening right now.
I am a lazy millenial that exploits the lack of imagination/ cheap labor available to enrich myself.
We literally live in the golden age for making money via internet entrepreneurship, and you can earn USD and be mobile (leave before wealth/income taxes moon) not sure why so many unpaid interns lol.
Btw noone wants to see boomers get rekt, a slow crash is better, but lets face it they are entitled as hell and literally act like “babies”, a fitting name for their gen.
IMO all this is by design of scumbag central bankers trying to increase ineuality and generational confict.
This was too harsh. – Future Blue.
Also, don’t eat the weird thing in the kitchen, it will cause the shits.
Gen Y and Z will laugh hysterically if Boomers lose their pensions and the values of their homes! They deserve it after voting for policies which enrich their generation at the expense of others!
Baby Boomers could have afforded to buy a Toronto bungalow for one year’s worth of wages working as a cashier or in a factory. Contrast this to today where one has to earn at least $160,000 a year to serve 25 years of mortgage prison for the same bungalow, but with more mold, termites and capital depreciation of foundation and structure,
It’s like the racist white man who lives in a million dollar bungalow that he inherited or bought for $10,000 thirty years ago, yelling xenophobic slurs at foreign students on the street, while voting for dependence on foreign capital to increase the value of his termite and mold infested million dollar bungalow.
Toronto detached: 2%.
TSX 300 YTD: 13.37%.
The goal is to buy low and sell high, not buy high and keep averaging up. The problem with viewing your home as an investment is you have to ride it through. There is no selling, waiting, and buying back at a lower point. You end up selling and renting at a higher rate, then buying at a cheaper rate than renting.
That’s with balanced diversification. If you want the Toronto “Put it all in one basket” method of investing, you would toss it in facebook and have made 34% before accounting for the currency devaluation in Canada.
I do quite enjoy all of the Toronto investment geniuses that invest in real estate like 70% of the population, then pretends they’re wealthy because they read millennials don’t make as much as previous generations. haha
hahaha all of sudden people do not want to comment on an article speculating some appreciation in real estate market. It’s okay whether you like it or not, price will appreciate.
1% is appreciation. lol.
I love the middle class. So arrogant and dumb. No idea how to make real money, but loves to drive it into poor people that they’re geniuses.
real estate will appreciate over time it always does in growing cities…toronto has limited supply especially in the core. there will be corrections when price momentum outstrips income and inflation numbers every few years, however the overall trend is up because supply is limited…its quite simple. it would be wise to buy and hold on any property in Toronto as a medium to long term asset.
toronto is canadas financial and tech hub, so there will be income growth and job opportunities for the foreseeable future.
Said everyone who got screwed during the 90s condo boom. It took 28 years approximately to bounce back, People here have literally posted links to newspaper articles with the exact same narrative: no land, urban core will always appreciate, more jobs, best place to live, immigration, center of canada. There will not be a crash per say, no one is scooping up a detached in TO or GTA for 50% but think about the dollar implications of even a 20% drop.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars tied to debt dollars. This kills spending and just lines the banks pockets even in the event of defaults.
If you’re suggesting toronto has more appeal than other, true global hubs, I think you need to take a step back. I love Canada and will never leave to be honest and toronto is wicked but get some perspective. There is more money flowing into Miami. You can count on one hand the number of billionaires who call toronto home and here’s the rub; they spend half their time or more in Miami (or equivalent). Tock. BD4L.
a 20% drop already happened in 2017 to now. people are still buying and the sky is not falling. I would hope it drops more so we can all get better homes for less, but lets be realistic, prices are already starting to creep up in Toronto especially detach. The condo market is due for a correction.
only those that bought a the peak will be affected the worst. for everyone else, they will be buying soon as the price drops like we are seeing now.
Working for minimum wage, or worse, working for free as unpaid interns under the supervision of a Baby Boomer who only got a Grade 8 or Grade 13 education.
I mean, I guess you’re right, in that if you hold on long enough prices will eventually appreciate. But man, a lot of people are not ready for that much holding on.
Too bad transaction costs are so high.
If you sold at the TOP and prices are down 10% you are no better off.
Real Estate Commissions + Land Transfer Tax + Moving Cost + Legal Fees ~ 10%
Is that because you’re too dumb to understand you don’t sit on capital?
You missed a 23% increase on your asset before leverage. If you used a third of the leverage you used buying a house, it’s almost 60%.
This site is so funny. Good data but so many bagholders in the comments.
People have been looking for a crash for 10+ years and have been wrong, but the thing is they only need to be right once for the bagholders to get rekt.
By 2029 millenials will have the most disposable income of any generation. I guarantee they will not be put excess into housing other than primary residence as once burned twice shy.
Real estate will stop be used as a store of value/inflation hedge with the rise of BTC (deflationary currency), as it should be.
I think this gets repeated every single week, but real estate bulls constantly try to dismiss real estate as overpriced by saying “everyone has been saying this for 10 years!”
Except NO ONE HAS BEEN SAYING IT FOR TEN YEARS.
Toronto real estate only recovered from it’s inflation adjusted 1989 peak in 2012. As in, in 2012, it was finally worth the same value it was in 1989. Is that over valued? Not at all – it’s literally been the same price for almost a quarter of a century.
The over valuation starts after the Bank of Canada cut in 2015, when they flooded the market with an unnecessary amount of cheap credit. That lead to the building boom and the immigration boom. Building houses is like building a highway. Once you build more, if there’s reasonable demand for use, more people will continue to arrive. However, when prices rise 50% in 3 years when they were flat for a 23, you’ve spent a lot of your future growth.
If you work in finance, this is painfully obvious. A stock that grow at multiples compared to it’s previous can go flying well beyond any logical value. As fewer and people are willing to pay that, the prices are waiting for any bad news to knock the air out.
These aren’t smart people driving a market right now, these are people that are being sold cheap loans on forums and by their branch manager. They will pay anything, and ride it through a loss with the utmost of confidence.
This is it. Thank you for putting it so clearly. I was gonna buy a house in Toronto in 2014 — I am a lower middle class older Millennial who is not particularly clever or good with money — then I lost a job, it took me longer than I expected to find one, and by the time I got my footing back under me EVERYTHING HAD GONE INSANE.
I don’t recall anyone calling for a crash in Toronto until after Poloz crashed interest rates by 50% in 2015, subsequently causing real estate to go into the stratosphere 1-2 years later. I do recall people calling for a severe correction in Vancouver as early as 2012. Yes they were wrong, but Vancouver RE was obscene even then.
I went outside for a break yesterday. 10 minute walk in a significantly populated downtown area of a major city. I came across a giant van, think Ford Econoline but bigger. It was painted cotton candy pink. As I walked past, the side of the van had the company name. The doors were open in the back. As I walked on by, I noticed three chairs sitting in semi-circle all facing the back of the van. On each chair was a girl having her hair done (curled, permed, etc. something like that). There were 4-5 girls who seemed like they were waiting to sit down next. Not in a line, just sporadic fashion. That’s where it occurred to me how experiential the new generation wants things to be. Everything needs to be an experience.
I heard on the radio that supermarkets are now changing their layout just so consumers can have an experience when they walk in.
To me, I’m in a bridge position where I grew up filling the gap between the generation before me and the generation after. I have an understanding on what the older generation has gone through/is going through and the same with the generation after.
My point to all this is that if “stuff” hits the fan and a recession hits, it’ll clip the older generation’s knees in the way previous posters have stated. Read most of the posts above this one. However, the younger generation will be clipped at the knees as well because all the money that companies / sole-props used for creating experiences will be out the window.
That’s what a recession does. It makes you realize the important things in life and what really matters. It cures complacency.
Wow let’s blame our mothers, fathers,son’s and daughter’s for the mess we are in .just what they want.
It’s bad government and greedy bankers,when we elect a majority government liberal or conservative it becomes an elected monarchy with the prime minister as the king to do whatever he or she likes we no longer have a say our elected officials no longer have a say,they are forced to vote in favour of the PM or fired,unlike all other Democratic government’s we have no way to stop bad policy the king wants.in every other country the government works for the people. Here the government works for the PM.
I’m just saying put the blame where it should be or it will never change.
They don’t realize the fundamentals. Canada especially Toronto basically have too much land. With Canada’s economy based on high taxation and universal health care, the system itself is designed to transfer wealth from young people to keep boomers alive. Now with this housing bubble we are doing further wealth transfer where young families have to take on huge mortgages and pay high taxes.
Once smart people start to realize what is going on those that have in demand skills will leave. Taking their taxes for future decades and consumer spending with them. The best always leave first because they have the choice. eventually you will be left with low skill labor that you can’t really tax then the health care system goes and the boomers get screw anyways.
The best way for a society to build wealth is to give resources to young productive talent so they can create business and other ventures. Not tax and suck all their income and transfer it to old and non productive segments of society. If the housing price don’t come down Canada is headed for economic collapse soon.
I urge all young families to be responsible for you and your families future and consider other places where cost of living is not so high.
Or wake up organise and fight back against the system.
Yup, and those who say the Boomers’ unearned wealth will simply be transfered back to their kids eventually…..not a chance. The Boomers will take out reverse mortgages to drain the equity from their homes and leave their kids with nothing.
York region’s drop is as high as 36%!
https://www.yorkregion.com/news-story/9390182-stouffville-house-prices-plummet-36-newmarket-and-aurora-drop-30-/