Looking for chaos outside Toronto’s City Hall? Well don’t look to the real estate sector. Once again we take the “nothing to see here” approach. In fact this week may go down as the most boring week in real estate. In both the freehold and condo sectors, there was literally no change in the number of available listings. As the old saying goes…no news is good news. Insert Mayoral joke here.

In the freehold sector, the number of available homes remained the same but we did see a slight geographical shift between the east and the west. Listings went up by 12% in the West and decreased by 12% in the East. Sales followed a similar pattern with a decrease of about 15% in the East and a minor increase in the West. The Central core registered a minimal 5% decline week over week. We are seeing an overall slight pullback in sales occurring but at this point there should be no concern as our open houses are seeing a great deal of traffic. Sales at or over the asking price remain at 50% or higher in each core region.

The condominium sector has seen a very minor rise in available listings (1.2% week over week) but registered a healthy 21% increase in sales. Of those sales 24% sold at or above the asking price compared to 22% last week. We believe this is further good news for condominium owners downtown.
The rental sector of Toronto’s real estate market continues to show strength. With a vacancy rate at 1.4% (according to TREB) and the largest share of condo apartments for rent (in the GTA according to CMHC), landlords continue to reap the rewards of a growing downtown population.