Sales results from January confirm that this will be a strong real estate year – not just in sales but for prices too. In January, sales were up by 15% over January of last year. But to put this in perspective, they matched January sales from 2016!
In terms of prices, the increases are even more dramatic. We had forecast a range of price increases for 2020 (see table). We are already averaging increases of 10% and more across all property types except the over $2,000,000 market. That is because of a severe shortage of new listings – down 17% from January of 2019 while sales increased!
In terms of the overall condo market, sales were 8% higher than a year ago in January while condo prices were almost 15% higher! In the downtown condo market, sales were up by 23% while new listings were down by 9%. In the Humber Bay Shores market, sales were surprisingly lower by 10%, but that is because new listings were down by 29%. In January of 2020, the biggest price range for condo sales was $500,000 - $600,000. A year ago, it was $400,000 - $500,000. For downtown condos, the entry point is now $500,000. See out graph below which shows a shift in condo sales over the past year of almost $100,000 higher.
For buyers, we expect to see a lot more listings in the latter half of March and April which should reduce the number of multiple offer sales and hopefully slow the price increases we have experienced in the first two months of 2020.
This Graph plots the number of condo sales categorized by price range. We can see that there is a shift in condo sales over the past year of almost $100,000 higher.
Source: Toronto Real Estate Board