If the big backyard and proverbial picket fence are that important to you as a would-be homeowner in Toronto, be prepared to shell out big bucks for those kind of living arrangements. Some will say that 1 million is only the number it is based on arbitrary criteria, and surely there’s many mortgage brokers who will think similarly and say it’s only 100k more than 990 thousand. But it is something of a threshold number, and that is reinforced when prospective homeowners look at many of these homes and wonder how if they weren’t in an inflated market would this home really even be worth 800k?
Housing prices are unnaturally inflated all across the country, but in Toronto and Vancouver most notably. Real estate agents working in these cities will like that reality on one end of the equation, but on the other end it means a) more agents in the game and b) fewer homeowners who can qualify to buy these detached homes in the first place. Try being a new realtor in the business in either city and you may find you’re not able to get clients as readily as you’d like, although there are plenty would-be 1st time home buyers who will be looking to get into the market with a Toronto area condo.
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Let’s get back to looking at the almost surreal expensiveness of detached homes in most of Toronto.
Not Just Toronto Proper – All 905 Areas
Satellite cities certainly haven’t been spared the meteoric price increases that have been seen in Southern Ontario’s desirable locations over recent years. Our friends at Re/Max tend to know their stuff, and they’ve shared that the TRREB that in all 60 areas of Greater Toronto and the ‘Golden Horseshoe’ there were only six had detached homes on the market and priced at less than $1 million. Whether or not that’s in a buyer’s or seller’s market is irrelevant at that point. It’s going to be very good for one side, and really not appealing at all for the other.
Overall home sales in Toronto exceeded 70,000 between January and June, working out to the strongest first half ever for the TRREB, and going way past record levels set in previous years. Without a serious influx of new listings to ease the upward pressure on pricing in the coming months, it is projected that the market will likely stay on this upward trajectory.
There were 11,297 active listings in the first half of the year, but that was down 35% from the 10-year average of 17,260 and in large part a reflection of the ‘cool down’ seen in real estate across the country through April and May. But this is countered by a 97% of TRREB areas. Almost half of those areas saw values go up nearly 25% year-over-year.
Certain trends are showing that first-time homebuyers are leaving Toronto to buy homes further away, and then move-up buyers are doing the same but often staying in certain areas and buying homes of higher value after selling their previous homes. Increased transit options and hybrid work schedules have made these sorts of relocations even more possible. This goes along with first-time homebuyers who are expanding their horizons mostly of a desire to get into the market before prices increase even further. Communities in Durham, Peel, Dufferin County and the most northern part of York Region have been the primary beneficiaries of this when it comes to properties sold to new owners.
There’s no denying first-time homebuyers are struggling with what supply and demand is doing to median home prices, while existing homeowners have been enjoying equity gains that have gone up immensely over the past 2+ years. Move-up buyers are taking advantage of lower interest rates and those equity gains to trade up to larger homes or neighbourhoods closer to the downtown core.
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