Hi, it’s Thomas Cook from Toronto’s Real Estate Team at RE/MAX Hallmark and here is our April 2012 Toronto real estate market report.

April’s average sale price again hit an all-time record high and the listing inventory is lower than historic levels.

April MLS sales totalled 10,350 houses and condominiums in all the districts. This sales number was up almost 18% from one year ago and just over 19% above the average for April since the year 2000.

28% of the market sales were condo townhouses and high-rise suites with 2,943 units changing hands during the month.

The April average sale price came in at $517,556 – up 8.4% from one year ago.

East of Yonge and south of Bloor in the C08 downtown TREB district, the condo sales price average stayed flat at $398,672 while west of Yonge in C01 the average increased to $425,604. I’ll give you more condo market details in just a few minutes.

Watch our complete April Toronto Real Estate Market by clicking on the video icon below…

Market Hits New High For Average Sale Price – Year-Over-Year Increase Drops is a post from: Toronto Real Estate | Toronto MLS Listings | Toronto Homes For Sale

March MLS sales totalled 9,690 houses and condominiums in all the districts.  This sales number was up almost 8% from one year ago but up almost 18% above the average for March since the year 2000.

Just under one-third of the market sales were condo townhouses and high-rise suites with 2,933 units changing hands during the month.

The March average sale price came in at $504,117 – up 10.5% from one year ago.

East of Yonge and south of Bloor in the C08 downtown TREB district, the condo sales price average dropped to $397,870 while west of Yonge in C01 the average was down $10,000 to $417,000.  I’ll give you more condo market details in just a few minutes.

Click on the video below to watch the entire March Toronto Real Estate Market Report.

Here’s the text version to read.

Is The Market Hitting The Top? is a post from: Toronto Real Estate | Toronto MLS Listings | Toronto Homes For Sale

OK, we’ve all been reading about Toronto’s so-called Bubble in real estate but is it real or manufactured?

Notice I didn’t say ‘imagined’ because, based on an outsider’s viewpoint, it would certainly seem like a bubble… multiple offers happening and houses going for tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands over the asking price.

So let’s first define a bubble.  Is it when prices skyrocket by 20+% annually like they did in California, Nevada or Florida?  Is it when anyone who can fog a mirror would be able to get a mortgage of hundreds of thousands of dollars?  How about many more sales happening than usual? I think that would be a reasonable definition so let’s go with that.

Are those things happening here in Canada and specifically Toronto?  The answer is a clear and unequivical “NO”.

On the mortgage financing side, our lenders have been very tough on qualifying borrowers and CMHC has disuaded banks from going the sub-prime route.  In fact, over the past several years, so-called sub-prime lending in Canada would be maybe 5-7% of the market compared to the USA where it was closer to 30%.  Even with the low rates recently being offered, many buyers are ‘underbuying’ – below what the bank qualifies them for.

In Toronto our average sale price year-over-year has been increasing by 5.5% since 1996 and by 5.8% since 2007.  In the last 3 years we have seen a bump – to 9.1% in 2010, 7.9% in 2011 and this February we did see double-digit number for the first time – a 10.6% increase year-over-year.  But still a far cry from the high-teens to low-twenties that were seen in the US’s bubble days!

What’s causing all the headlines these days is the “sold for $XXX thousands over list price” stuff.  So, why is that happening?  Is that not a symptom of a bubble, that craziness of buyers to ‘over pay’ for a property?

The answer is a resounding “NO”.  A home selling over list price is at least 90+% manufactured by the listing agent and frankly sometimes to the seller’s detriment.

In the old days (and the way I practice real estate even now), an agent would look at the comparable sales in the neighbourhood, add on a 3-5% ‘negotiating factor’ and put the home on the market.  Qualified buyers would see that listing, book an appointment to look at it one day or evening and, if they liked it, put in an offer that evening or the next day.  Buyers who could not afford it would not bother to go and see it, they wouldn’t have to waste money doing a home inspection for a home they didn’t have a chance of getting and sane heads would prevail.

Now, in some Toronto neighbourhoods as many as 80% of the listing agents take the easy way out for themselves.  They encourage sellers to ‘underlist’ their home by 10-15% minimum to try and create an auction effect and hold off doing offers until ‘a week Tuesday’ for example.  The result… buyers who can only afford the home at its 15% discount see it, fall in love naturally because it’s really out of their price range, and want to do an offer ‘just in case it goes for less than it should’.  And as an agent working on the buyer’s behalf, you really need to do it because “what if” no one else showed up and yours was the only one?

The result… multiple offers AND, for the most part, a sale price in the proper range of value.  The seller didn’t gain money but the agent gained time… they only need to deal with that seller and that listing for usually a week.  Yes sometimes buyers get carried away and the seller benefits from a higher price but I’ve also seen the reverse… it ultimately sold for a lower price than recent sales would have predicted!

In the sale often commented on in the papers about that North York bungalow that sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars over list, did you notice who the buyer was?  A young girl buying with her parents’ overseas money.  To her and her family, overpaying by a $100,000 or so probably really didn’t matter.  I’ve seen this happen several times recently and, although we’re not Vancouver where this happens quite frequently, it does exist here too.  And when it does, it skews the market and gets the headlines!

So what about sales numbers?  Are they massively out of line?  Again a “NO” answer.  Sales numbers in over the first three months of this year are up about 9.5% over the average since 2000.  Not a tremendous number but really what we’ve seen this year is an early start to the spring market due to the unseasonably warm weather we’ve had.

The real problem to all the market activity is the shortage of product to sell.  In the first three months of this year, inventory levels are down an average of 31% when compared to the 2000-2011 average.  I think many sellers are stuck where they are because, although their existing home has increased in value, they haven’t paid down their mortgage enough to give them the equity to make a jump up to the next larger home which is usually at least $150-200,000 more expensive.

I’m certainly not saying we’re in a fun market.  Our Team represents a lot of buyers in their home searches and we absolutely hate this multiple offer crap.  Just list a home at the right price and let the market take care of itself instead of creating a false, time- and money-wasting scenarios by under-listing.

Some of us in the business would like a slower market where there were more listings available and fewer if any manufactured multiple offers.  In our opinion, both buyers and sellers would benefit from this.

Bottom line… this so-called real estate bubble the media is so fond of making headlines about is “manufactured”, unfortunately some of it by Realtors who under-list homes! 

So far, real sales activity in Toronto’s market is not a cause for alarm from the public, CMHC or the Bank of Canada.

Is The Toronto Real Estate Bubble REAL Or MANUFACTURED By Media Reports ? is a post from: Toronto Real Estate | Toronto MLS Listings | Toronto Homes For Sale

February MLS sales totalled 7,032 houses and condominiums in all the districts. This sales number was up 12.3% from one year ago and was 12.5% above the average for Februarys since the year 2000.

31.1% of the market sales were condo townhouses and high-rise suites with 2,187 units changing hands during the month.

The February average sale price came in at $502,508 – up 10.6% from one year ago.

East of Yonge and south of Bloor in the C08 downtown TREB district, the condo sales price average was $405,000 while west of Yonge in C01 the average was $426,700.

Click on the video below to watch the entire February Toronto Real Estate Market Report.

Here’s the text version to read.

Toronto Real Estate Does It Again – Another Record Month is a post from: Toronto Real Estate | Toronto MLS Listings | Toronto Homes For Sale

Craig starts off by apologizing for last year’s economic forcast of what would happen to the Toronto real estate market in 2011 – it seems ALL of the economists got it wrong!

It’s not often us normal citizens get a change to hear an in-depth, global, nation-wide and Toronto-GTA analysis of what we should expect to happen in 2012.  It helps us understand what factors are and will be affecting Toronto’s real estate market.

So, grab a tea, coffee or your beverage of choice and watch this very informative video from Craig who is the Chief Economist now at TD Canada Trust.

Craig Alexander From TD Economics Gives His 2012 Forcast For Toronto Real Estate is a post from: Toronto Real Estate | Toronto MLS Listings | Toronto Homes For Sale

January MLS sales totalled 4,718 houses and condominiums in all the districts.  This sales number was up 5.3% from one year ago and was about average for Januarys since the year 2000.

32.6% of the market sales were condo townhouses and high-rise suites with 1,489 units changing hands during the month.

The January average sale price came in at $463,534 – up 8.5% from one year ago.

Click on the video below to watch the entire January Toronto Real Estate Market Report.

Toronto’s Real Estate Market Continues Strong Due To Low Inventory And No Snow ! is a post from: Toronto Real Estate | Toronto MLS Listings | Toronto Homes For Sale

December MLS sales totalled 4,718 houses and condominiums in all the districts.  This sales number was up 7.3% from one year ago and came in as the 3^rd best December in TREB history.

36.2% of the market sales were condo townhouses and high-rise suites with 1,710 units changing hands during the month.

Sales for this year totalled 89,347 homes That made 2011 the 2^nd best year for sales in the Toronto Real Estate Board’s history after 2007.

The December average sale price came in at $451,436 – up 4% from one year ago. The average for the year was $465,412,  up 7.9% from 2010.

East of Yonge and south of Bloor in the C08 downtown TREB district, the condo sales price average was $412,843 while west of Yonge in C01 the average was $409,572.

Watch the video below for the full report.

Toronto Hits Number Two For Real Estate Sales in 2011 is a post from: Toronto Real Estate | Toronto MLS Listings | Toronto Homes For Sale

November MLS sales totalled 7,092 houses and condominiums in all the districts.  This sales number was barely changed from October and came in as the 3rd best November in TREB history.

Sales for the first eleven months of this year totalled just over 87,000 homes… on track to have an annual sales result of over 91,000.  That would make 2011 clearly the 2nd best year for sales in the Toronto Real Estate Board’s history after 2007.

Take a look at the November Toronto real estate market report and see what’s happening in our local real estate market!

Toronto Home Sales Expected To Be Second Best Ever is a post from: Toronto Real Estate | Toronto MLS Listings | Toronto Homes For Sale

If you look back to news reports and at certain blog commentators from one year ago, all was doom and gloom.  Prices were going to fall, people who bought real estate were foolish and renting was the absolute smart thing to do.

Unfortunately for all those who took that advice, it hasn’t worked out that way!  Prices are up, inventory is low and, although thankfully not as crazy as it was in the spring, the market is still busy as we approach the Christmas holiday season.

On average somone who continued renting for the past year would have missed gaining approximately $32,000 in property appreciation – not too shabby considering most people only save $4,000 to $10,000 annually if they’re a tenant.

Take a look at the October Toronto real estate market report and see what’s happening in our local real estate market!

October Toronto Real Estate Sales Continue To Post Price Increases is a post from: Toronto Real Estate | Toronto MLS Listings | Toronto Homes For Sale

Hi, it’s Thomas Cook from Toronto’s Real Estate Team at RE/MAX Hallmark and here is our September 2011 Toronto real estate market report.

September’s average sale price was up substantially compared to one year ago but the listing inventory was lower.

We’re going to talk about what’s normal and what’s abnormal in the September market as we go thru this month’s report.
 
So let’s look at the September Toronto Real Estate Board statistics.

Toronto Real Estate Market Continues To Roll – September Was 2nd Best Ever is a post from: Toronto Real Estate | Toronto MLS Listings | Toronto Homes For Sale