Eugene Palermo

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January 2024 Toronto Real Estate Market Report

This first month of 2024 unfolded as anticipated. As 2023 came to an end, an air of optimism began to spread through the Toronto and Region residential resale market. This optimism was driven by the belief that rate hikes by the Bank of Canada were at an end and rate relief was on its way. This was confirmed in January when the Bank met and held its benchmark rate at 5 percent, but more importantly, and for the first time, indicated that it was already planning for rate cuts - it was just a question...

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December 2023 Toronto Real Estate Market Report

2023 has ended, and from a real estate perspective, it has not been one of the industry’s more shining years. In 2023, only 65,982 resale properties were reported sold for the entire Greater Toronto Area. One would need archeological skills to find a less robust year, as the chart below clearly indicates.




What makes 2022 and 2023 numbers concerning is the fact that population in the Greater Toronto Area has grown by almost 15 percent since 2011. In 2011, the area’s population was 5,593,000....

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November 2023 Toronto Real Estate Market Report

To paraphrase T.S. Elliot, the Toronto and Region residential resale marketplace is ending the year not with a bang, but a very quiet whisper. November sales totalled 4,236 homes, down by 6 percent compared to the number of sales reported last November. This is the lowest number of sales reported for November since the economic downturn of 2008. As mentioned in previous market reports, the number of reported sales is particularly low when it is remembered that the Toronto Region’s population...

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October 2023 Toronto Real Estate Market Report

In many ways, the Toronto and area residential resale market reflected September’s results in October.  Sales volumes were practically unchanged, further emphasizing how sluggish the market has become and they continued the string of historically low sales numbers for this time of the year.



In October, 4,646 residential properties were reported sold, almost 6 percent fewer than the 4,930 reported sales last year. Year-to-date, 56,367 homes have changed hands. Based on the current pace of...

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September 2023 Toronto Real Estate Market Report

The Toronto and Region residential resale marketplace is, to say the least, confusing. The numbers reported by the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board depict a market in the doldrums with sales volumes having declined for 4 consecutive months, reaching levels more consistent with sales volumes achieved more than two decades ago when the greater Toronto area had a population almost half of what it has today.



Although there is some seasonality in these numbers, August and now September’s performance...

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August 2023 Toronto Real Estate Market Report

There were no surprises in the residential resale data for the month of August. As forecast in last month’s Report, while the benchmark rate of the Bank of Canada remains at its lofty rate – it is currently 5.0 percent – and the average sale price for all properties sold, although declining, is still high, sales volumes will remain low. And that is what happened in August.


During the month of August, only 5,294 residential properties were reported sold. In July, 5,245 properties...

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July 2023 Toronto Real Estate Market Report

On a year-over-year basis, July’s residential resale market results were quite favourable. The 5,250 sales reported were almost 8 percent higher than the 4,870 properties reported sold last July. The average sale price for all properties sold came in at $1,118,374, a 4.2 percent improvement compared to the average sale price of $1,073,213 achieved in July last year. Even days-on-market improved by 10.5 percent, from 19 to 17 days this July.


However, by July 2022, the Bank of Canada had implemented...

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June 2023 Toronto Real Estate Market Report

June was the first month since January when both sales and average sale prices declined, as compared to the month before. June saw 7,481 reported residential resales as compared to almost 9,000 sales in May. The average sales price dropped moderately from $1,195,929 for the Greater Toronto Area as compared to the price of $1,182,120 in May.



Notwithstanding these declines, the market remains exceptionally strong, with demand continuing to outstrip supply. The decline can be attributed to a number of...

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May 2023 Toronto Market Report

It is hard to believe that in a span of fifteen months the Toronto and region real estate resale market has gone from record breaking sales and house prices to a precipitous decline, not seen in decades, to a market resurrection in May. Although May did not match the dizzying highs of February and March of 2022, resale results were nothing short of impressive.


May marked the forth consecutive month of rising sales. What was particularly impressive was the increase in the number of reported sales compared...

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April 2023 Toronto Real Estate Report

As forecast in March’s Market Report, April’s residential resale market continued its upward trajectory for the third month in a row. Sales volumes increased by more than 9 percent compared to March and the average sale price, which also bounced for the third month in a row since January, increased by more than 3 percent compared to March.



This trajectory is unlikely to change in May. It would have been even steeper if not constrained by affordability and the alarming decline in supply....

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March 2023 Toronto Real Estate Report

As forecast March’s residential resale market continued its upward trajectory, constrained only by available supply and the lack of affordability driven by the high cost of mortgage financing and the requirement to stress-test borrowers. Stress testing means that buyers must qualify at 2 percent higher than the interest rate of the mortgage they are seeking. In March the five-year fixed-term mortgage interest rate was slightly below 5 percent. Buyers, therefore, must qualify at approximately...

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April 2023 Toronto Real Estate Report

As forecast in March’s Market Report, April’s residential resale market continued its upward trajectory for the third month in a row. Sales volumes increased by more than 9 percent compared to March and the average sale price, which also bounced for the third month in a row since January, increased by more than 3 percent compared to March.

This trajectory is unlikely to change in May. It would have been even steeper if not constrained by affordability and the alarming decline in supply....

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February 2023 Toronto Real Estate Report

There is no point in comparing February 2023 with February 2022. February 2022 was the apogee of the pandemic residential real estate market. The average sale price achieved last February, $1,334,544, remains, and will for some time, the all time monthly average sale price record. Interest rates were at an all time low, the Bank of Canada benchmark rate was a mere 0.25 percent and is now 4.50 percent. The pandemic had created a buying hysteria, which in conjunction with low mortgage interest rates,...

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January 2023 - Toronto Real Estate Market Report

As forecast in December, the slumping resale market of 2022 continued into the first month of 2023. Compared to January 2022, sales of all property types declined by almost 45 percent. Due to the extraordinarily strong pandemic market early last year, on a year-over-year basis sales volumes will post substantial negative variances until at least April. By April 2022, increased borrowing costs had begun to slow the residential resale market with an unprecedented impact. Since March of last year, sales...

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December 2022 Toronto Real Estate Market Report

The Toronto and area residential resale market limped to the end of 2022, a continuation of the pattern that became clear and established as interest rates began to rise in March of this year. As the Bank of Canada continued its punishing benchmark rate hikes, both sales and average sale prices have been decimated. Once again, no surprises in December.

Here is what has happened to sales since the Bank of Canada commenced its rate hikes in March.

December’s sales results were more than 48 percent...

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November 2022 Toronto Real Estate Market Report

December 12, 2022

In November only 4,544 residential properties were reported sold for the greater Toronto area. This is the lowest number of monthly sales recorded in 2022 and almost 50 percent fewer than the 8,979 sales reported for the same month last year. It has been almost 15 years since the market has seen numbers as low as those produced in November.


Although the average sale price has declined substantially since the spring, in fact it has declined by almost 20 percent, it appears to...

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October 2022 Toronto Real Estate Market Report
As forecast in our September Market Report, sales have continued to decline on a year-over-year basis. In October 4,961 properties were reported sold in the greater Toronto area, almost 50 percent fewer than the 9,743 properties that changed hands last October. The decline in sales is a continuation of a pattern that started in March when the Bank of Canada began its fight against inflation by increasing its benchmark rate. The Bank further increased the benchmark rate by 0.5 percent in late October...
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July 2022 Toronto Real Estate Market Report

For the fourth consecutive month the Toronto and area resale housing market produced declining sales and lower average sale prices. The housing market peaked in February for average sale prices, in March for monthly reported sales. In February the average sale price for the greater Toronto area came in at an incredible (and unsustainable) $1,334,000. Sales in March hit 10,881, which was not a record. The record for March sales was achieved in 2021 when an unbelievable 15,627 homes of all types were...

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June 2022 Toronto Real Estate Market

Not unexpectedly June produced a substantial negative variance when compared to the numbers that the Toronto and Region residential resale market produced in June of 2021. Rising mortgage interest rates have over the last three months caused sales to drop fairly precipitously, and although sales prices are off from their high of February of this year, they remain higher than average sale prices achieved last June. 

In June 6,474 properties were reported sold, a 41 percent decline from the 11,053...

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April 2022 Toronto Real Estate Market
As forecast, the rising mortgage interest rates (not to mention other factors at play, like the war in the Ukraine, inflation, and ongoing supply chain problems) had a direct impact on the number of residential properties reported sold in April. At the end of April, the five-year fixed mortgage rate was 4.19 percent. In February the five-year rate was 2.79 percent, an increase of more than 50 percent in a mere two months. Coupled with the mortgage stress test that all borrowers must undergo when ...
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