It’s been a few weeks since we last reported and this being the beginning of a brand new year we wanted to get off to an early AND fresh start. Here’s a recap of what we are all about...

Last week’s real estate market update could best be described by the simple phrase “no news is good news”. Across the downtown core it appears that while listings are inching lower, there is still plenty of appetite for buying a home. Give it time though. In talking with our agents we know that many buyers are waiting patiently for the spring market. In a few months pent up demand will return and buying a home in Toronto will look like Black Friday at a big box store in the United States.....

After a brief dip a few weeks ago, the number of new listings in both the freehold and condo sectors jumped last week. While this increase is still much lower than historical averages it forces the question…what gives? The simplest answer is that we are witnessing the last hooray before the listing taps start to close over the winter holidays.

With no distractions to stand in our way for at least the next month we knew that we would see a return to a more traditional fall market. Things got off on the right foot two weeks ago and the steady pace of more listings and sales has continued just as we predicted. With two months left in 2015 there is still plenty of transactions on the horizon and our research shows there are plenty of buyers waiting for the perfect home.

Two weeks ago we witnessed a tsunami of new listings in downtown Toronto but a relatively lackluster sales performance left us feeling kind of empty. We made the bold statement that perhaps the reason sales were so low was because most of the new listings were holding back offers until the following week. We bravely predicted that sales would spike dramatically soon after and we are happy to report that we were right on the money. We didn’t need a crystal ball; our prediction was based on a solid understanding of Toronto’s real estate market.....

Last week we were reminded of the one question that has stumped scientists the world over; if a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one there to hear it, does it actually make a noise? In terms of downtown Toronto real estate it seems that we could ask a similar question….If there’s no one around to buy a house, does anything sell? Luckily keeping a sharp eye on everything related to the housing market provides us with all the answers to that question and more.....

There are two simple truths that we learned last week; Kanye West is NOT a Canadian and Toronto’s real estate market turned in another gold medal performance. Sure, things are slowing down a bit but that’s more a seasonal tendency. What catches our eye is the fact that while listings are way down in both the freehold and condo sectors, sales are only down a little. Clearly demand is still raging downtown but supply continues to be the major issue....

The freehold sector had one of the single highest week over week changes with a noticeable 25.6% increase in new listings and a similarly grandiose 54.5% increase in sales last week. With that increase came slightly more demand as transactions at or above the list price edged up 2.5% from the previous week to stand at 54.5%. What stands out the most when we reviewed last week’s data was the amount of movement in the entry level home ($400k to $700k) across the city’s core where listings increased by 37%. While the single detached Toronto home has topped the million dollar mark, there is plenty of room for those on a more modest budget....