It’s definitely true that if you live in one of the few major metro areas in Canada you certainly experience day-to-day life much differently than people who reside in less populated parts of the country. The most prominent parts of that difference have nothing to do with homes themselves, but there’s definitely something profound in understanding that what would get you a 2-bed condo in downtown Vancouver or Toronto would buy you a detached house with huge backyard and lots of space elsewhere in Canada.
Reality is most people live in major metropolitan urban areas because their careers and livelihoods necessitate them being there, and that demand is what’s at the ongoing heart of the hot housing market in Canada. One that has – as we’ve seen – gotten even hotter throughout the Coronavirus pandemic and then of course with houses selling for more than ever before in many areas you will inevitably have more people considering becoming a real estate agent in Canada.
Getting a leg up on increasingly high levels of competition is never easy, and that’s why our online lead generation system for realtors here at Real Estate Leads is as highly recommended as it is. What it does is take the power of polling within Internet Marketing to find participants who meet the criteria in determining whether or not they are genuinely ready to make a move in the local real estate market.
We can get to more about that later, but where we are now in all of this is seeing that there may be something a ‘pause’ now in the Toronto real estate market, and how the consensus is that’s not a bad thing at all.
Calm Before ‘Small’ Storm?
There are reasons to believe the Greater Toronto Area’s housing market is cooling, but that it’s only a brief reprieve. But let’s state what needs to be said right away; seeing some air come out of the bubble is probably a good thing as we have a situation where many who’ve left the cities may be joining a resumed flow of new immigrants into cities that will boost prices again in the not-too-distant future.
But in the interim, this may be a chance to others to more judiciously decide if it’s time for them to get into the housing market. Now the reason we say judiciously is because recently many buyers have been putting pressure on themselves to find a home to by because of – in large parts – what’s abbreviated to be ‘FOMO’ or Fear Of Missing Out.
The belief was if they didn’t get into the housing market now, they might never have the same chance again. There might be some truth to that for some people, but it’s never good to make really BIG decisions under duress.
So perhaps it’s time that you – as a realtor – provide some of those same assurances and advice to clients.
Data Shows a Slowing
Data from the TRREB makes clear there were 13,663 sales in the GTA in April, and that’s a dip of 12.7% from a month prior, which indicates a flattening of the selling price during that period, but one that’s still up 36.6% above the 10-year average of 10,000 transactions for the month between 2010 – 2019.
We then see further that the number of sales last month was more than 4x higher than what occurred for April 2020, which was of course the 1st full month of COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns.
New listings went down by 8.4% to 20,825 in April from March, but were still than 3x the number of new listings at this time last year.
Huge Sales Growth with Small Pop. Growth
This torrid pace for home sales since the summer of 2020 all occurred while there was very little in the way of population growth. Some realtors are saying that what is happening now is the pool of potential buyers within the GTA right now is dwindling. With sustained growth in population that might occur in the future that could change, but this is the way it is right now.
Let’s keep in mind that Canada has plan to welcome 1.2 million new Canadians by the end of 2023, and 60% of them will be economic class migrants who will be the types of workers and family heads that will both needs homes and be able to purchase them – with the help of a realtor like you of course!
For all these reasons it’s very likely that this is a short stall in the market, but if you have clients who are in a unique position to turn this into an advantage for them then you should definitely be making them aware of it if they’re not already.
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