According to TRREB – the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, house prices in Toronto continued to rise in March and sales almost doubled – compared to the same month a year earlier when everything was shutting down at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sales in the Toronto area in March amounted to 15,652, which is as much as 97% more compared to 7,945 at the same time a year ago.
Such a drastic increase in the number of houses sold took place, as it is compared to March 2020 – then the first effects of the pandemic began to be visible, and buyers and sellers were afraid of what would happen on the market.
Since then, all fears have been allayed. Both realtors and housing agencies have been recording a sharp increase in sales since the beginning of the year, exceeding their most optimistic expectations. According to them, the number of buyers at the moment will make up and exceed losses for the periods last year when sales were low.
According to Lisa Patel of TRREB, the faith and confidence of economic recovery, along with the low cost of borrowing, supported such a high rate of home sales last month.
In the first 14 days of March, we had 6,504 homes sold, 41% more than in the same period last year. And between March 15th and March 31st, we had 9,148 homes sold, a 174% increase from the same, “covid”, period in March 2020.
Dividing the month of March into two parts is of great importance here. The first half of March 2020 looked pretty typical. But the restrictions that had been recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11 have plunged sales.
The current price pressure is caused by a low number of homes for sale in relation to the number of home seekers. This is evidence of optimism among buyers. This fact also sheds light on the persistent insufficiency of the number of new homes available in the GTA housing market, which in turn has an impact on the affordability of offers.
The median house price in the area jumped 21.6% to $ 1,097,565 from $ 902,787 a year earlier. The number of offers jumped 57% to 22,709 from 14,434.
The most drastic price jump took place in the case of detached housing, where the average price jumped by as much as 26.6%, reaching the level of $ 1,402,849. The average semi-detached home was sold for $ 1,045,519 corresponding to a 17.5% increase in price, while townhouse prices soared 20.7% to $ 870,553.
Condos prices recorded the lowest increase. The price of the average condo rose by just 2.6% to $ 676,052.
