Devonian Pond at the Ryerson University
The Toronto real estate market has behaved as expected in July. The number of sales recorded via the Toronto Real Estate Board's MLS® database was the highest ever recorded for July, which makes it yet another record breaking month. The year-over-year comparison however shows only a slight increase - only 1.8 per cent, from last year's 9,813 to this year's 9,989. This might be one of many signs that the rapid growth of the real estate market we were experiencing last years is slowing down.
Another factor is the rapidly decreasing supply of properties available on the market. Last year in July, there were 16,673 active listings on the GTA market, this year there were only 11,346. That's a quite stunning decrease by 31.9 per cent. Larry Cerqua, the President of TREB, has stated:
GTA REALTORS® have been working very hard on behalf of their buyer clients to help them find a home meeting their needs. Unfortunately, listings for single-detached and semi-detached houses and townhouses continue to be in short supply. The result has been an increase in pent-up demand and annual rates of price increases well above the rate of inflation. Housing policy is now top of mind for all levels of government. Policy makers need to be focusing on solutions to the sustained lack of low-rise inventory throughout the GTA.
The increased buying activity and many bidding wars have pushed the average price in GTA by 16.6 per cent, from $608,875 in July 2015 to $709,825 this year, while the average time needed to sell a property has decreased from last year's 22 days to just 16 days this year.
Despite the more difficult process of getting a mortgage when buying house for the first time, the sales and average prices are about to continue rising and the demand is about to get more and more thin. Feel free to contact our team with any questions regarding both buying and selling real estate. We'll be more than happy to help!
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