Toronto real estate market springs back to life

• By Sue Aitken
• Posted Monday, Apr 10, 2023 12:03 pm

Toronto real estate market springs back to life

Transactions have increased month-over-month with average sale price ticking upwards for the first time in a year

Several weeks back, when I first wrote that my colleagues and I were starting to see some undeniable signs of life returning to the Toronto real estate market, it was hard to believe what I was seeing, let alone saying.

I spoke of houses selling in multiple offers hours after hitting the MLS. And not just one or two offers — seventeen.

At that point, it was noteworthy to see, but such cases by and large felt like wild outliers — the market was still pretty quiet and mostly depressing. Few transactions, prices holding firm enough to keep affordability at bay, everything on pause.

But in the weeks that followed, particularly in the recent days following March break, the true starting point of the spring market, a pattern emerged. Anything halfway decent, priced reasonably close to market value, was drawing buyers out off of the sidelines.

If someone had told me a year ago that we could see this kind of action at these kind of price points with interest rates on the other side of 5%, I would have struggled to believe it.

The March sales figures, released late last week by the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board tells us we should try to believe it.

While the year-over-year data clearly paints a picture of a sharp market correction over the past twelve months with sales down 36.5% and average price down 14.6% from March 2022, this is not news — what’s noteworthy is seeing that transactions have increased month-over-month, and average sale price, now at $1,108,606 is trending upwards both on an actual and a seasonally-adjusted basis.

New listings are up, average days on market has decreased, list-to-sale ratio is up — all signifiers that something has shifted and the market...[READ MORE]