Black Friday. If you aren’t familiar with the term by now, you soon will be. In the United States it is the biggest shopping day of the year…and it’s making its way north of the border. It’s about time. We already have Boxing Day, but in true Canadian fashion, we take advantage of the sales AFTER Christmas. Go figure. Well not for long! Unfortunately Black Friday isn’t going to do you any good if you’re waiting for a deal on a house!
In the freehold sector, listings continue to decline. This week alone, there were 13% fewer active listings throughout the central and east/west cores. In other words, the shelves are bare and if you are reaching for that beautiful Victorian row house, be prepared to arm wrestle your fellow
shopper to get it. This week we saw the tightest resale market so far this year. Nearly 60% of the homes sold this week happened at or above the list price.
The condominium sector suffered its biggest blow of the year with two back to back negative stories. The first was a CBC documentary called “The Condo Game” that inferred that between shoddy construction and absent owners, the condo market was in a sea of trouble. The second was the release of a recent study by Veritas Investment Research that indicated the condo rental market was slipping. Their research suggests that with decreased returns, landlords may be forced to sell which could lead to a flood of new condos on market. Interesting theory that goes against the conventional thinking that immigration will keep the condo sector afloat. The numbers show listings down by nearly 6% week over week. Sales have slipped 25% in the same period which is the biggest weekly drop of the year. The number that we see as the determining gauge of health is the percentage of sales at or above asking. For the better part of the year this number has been slowly climbing, but this week we saw a significant drop (from an average of about 22% in 2013 to 15% this week).
MARKET UPDATE FOR THE WEEK ENDING NOVEMBER 22ND
Last week both Buyers and Sellers were riveted to CP24 as news of our Mayor’s behavior continued to unravel. As a result, Toronto’s real estate market produced one of the most boring weeks of the year. This week we are in much better spirits. Life is returning to normal (sort of) and we are much happier watching Jon Stewart and Saturday Night Live Mayoral spoofs instead.
Now, back to business. If you’ve lived in the city more than a couple of years then you’ve already recognized the pattern. Listings go up in the spring and down by the end of the fall. Sure there are a few blips, due to heat waves, long weekends, and mortgage rate drops but the pattern seems to be fairly consistent. So it should come as no surprise that listings are down…..AGAIN. In the freehold sector available listings are down 5% this week and while sales are also down by the same amount, we are also happy to report that sales at or over the asking price has increased by 6%. While still not at the high of the year, Toronto remains the envy of the World’s Seller’s market with a remarkable 46% of sales happening at or above the asking price. This is not a function of low pricing rather, the strong demand!
After a short lived increase in listings last week, the condominium sector reported a 5% drop this week but unlike its freehold cousin, sales increased by a whopping 15%. Wow. For us though, our key metric for condo market health remains the percentage of suites selling at or above the list price. Again, while not at the high water mark set earlier in the fall, we are still seeing nearly a quarter of all condos sold in a bidding war this week and over 70% of listings surveyed selling at between 98% and 99% of the asking price.
MARKET UPDATE FOR THE WEEK ENDING DECEMBER 6TH
With just a few more weeks before Christmas, home buyers are spending more time shopping for gifts for their loved ones. Hey, that’s okay. After a blistering fall pace, only hampered by a lack of listings, it might be nice for buyers to sit back, enjoy some holiday spirit and relax for a change. Mind you, the hearty shoppers are still out there looking for a bargain or two. As an example…this week we listed a semi-detached home in The Junction and within 16 hours it had over 35 showings.
Freehold listings continue to get scarcer. This week, new listings backed off another 12% while sales decreased across the central and east/west cores by nearly 30%. Last week we hit a high of over 60% of homes
selling at or above asking price, this week that number is a much more realistic 40%. Perhaps people have left the Black Friday mindset and returned to more rational thinking?
There was one nice surprise this week. While condominium listings pulled back a further 10% week over week, sales actually increased by 12% (one of the biggest week over week gains of the year). Of the 125 sales that took place in the core, almost 14% sold at or above asking price. Ok, so not as great as the freehold sector, but we continue to be optimistic about the condo market as we move into 2014. Overall, the happy meter is moving out of the “real estate bubble” category and into the “cautious optimism” category. Lets’ hope that in 2014 the arrow passes straight into the “joyous jubilation” range.
MARKET UPDATE FOR THE WEEK ENDING JANUARY 10TH
Welcome to 2014. We can safely claim to have survived another strong year in real estate despite what the doomsayers were hoping for. Still, the weather Gods continue to test our resolve. Remember the Summertime floods? It seems that no sooner had we dried out our basements that Toronto got hit with ICESTORM 2013. It looks like we will be paying for this one for a while too - frozen pipes, ice damage, downed trees. On a positive note, the kids are back at school and ice skating to work has never been better.
It should come as no surprise that our first market report of the year, carries with it the typical post-holiday statistics. While the Fall market was busy, sales tapered off slowly into late December. Freehold listings are down by nearly 50% from a month ago and while sales in the central core were as strong this week as they were last month, the bidding wars are less prevalent . Both east and west districts witnessed only about 1/4 of their usual sales activities. From our perspective, we see a lot of agents already preparing new listings for the market so this temporary “shortage” of new listings is not going to last.
As we have found out last year, the condominium market behaves much differently than its cousin the freehold market. This segment can change on a dime and take much of its directional influence from global financial trends. Clearly, investors form a significant portion of condo ownership in Toronto and these investors don’t concern themselves with seasonality. Listings across the core were only down 15% from a month ago but the number of sales remained uncharacteristically high. Recent reports predict as many as 20,000 new condo suites will be delivered in the city in 2014. We will be watching, with interest, to see what effect this will have on the overall health of the condo market.
MARKET UPDATE FOR THE WEEK ENDING JANUARY 31ST
Being that we are Toronto’s oldest and largest independent real estate brokerage, it’s safe to say that we have seen it all. We know the weather has an impact on people’s motivation to get out and look at houses, but this week we are going to blame the decrease in listings solely on the shoulders of Justin Beiber. Yes, that’s right. We know HE is real cause for our real estate turmoil. Toronto is wrapped up in a giant game of “Where’s Beiber” instead of getting their homes ready for market. Well at least we aren’t thinking about the cold anymore and provided “the Biebs” doesn’t get deported from the US, everything should return to normal in a week or two. We can’t wait.
Just when we thought more homes would come on the market, we experienced a sudden reversal of fortune. Following several consecutive weeks of rising inventory we witnessed a 4% slip this week. Okay, that’s not much in the grand scheme of things but buyers are lining up. Need another example? This week we had the second wild bidding war with a major fixer upper in Roncesvalles receiving 34 offers. While sales improved by 9% this week we can report that multiple offers occurred on an incredible 54% of the homes sold.
The condo market is perplexing at best. Listings decreased by 10% week over week, while sales only slipped by 5%. From our perspective the condo market continues to show strength as nearly 20% of the weekly sales occurred at or above the list price and nearly 90% of the properties sold are within 1% of the asking price. Clearly there is appetite for condominium living in the city. It is interesting to point out that the biggest decrease in available suites happened in the central neighbourhoods in the entry level category.
MARKET UPDATE FOR THE WEEK ENDING FEBRUARY 7TH
We think the Toronto real estate market should borrow the US Postal Service motto “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night....” It seems appropriate these days when you consider that we are having the coldest and snowiest winter in memory, but when it comes to buying a house no one seems to care. In fact, home buyers came out in record numbers this week.
Freehold listings continued to fall with nearly 30% fewer listings than a week ago. That was most apparent in the central core where listings dropped by a substantial 37%. Given fewer listings we aren’t surprised that the number of sales slipped by a marginal 7.5% but the big news is that 67% of homes traded this week throughout the central, east and west cores, sold at or above asking price. That is the highest percentage since we have been tracking these statistics and a huge jump from the 54% last week.
The condo market is well on its way to market health again. Consider that listings are down marginally this week but sales are up nearly 50% from a week earlier. The biggest jump happened in the central core’s move-up market (condos listed between $700k and $1.5M). It is also interesting to note that multiple offers are on the rise. Last week, 18% of transactions occurred at or above the list price while this week that number is over 24%.
