The Greater Toronto Area’s new home market is levelling out
By Newinhomes on Nov 26, 2019
The Greater Toronto Area’s new home market was busy in October, according to the latest figures released by the Building Industry and Land Development Association and its reliable source for new home market intelligence, Altus Group.
There were 4,720 new home sales across the GTA in October 2019. Nearly 1,300 of the sales were new single-family homes, which is 178% higher than the same month a year ago. This is also the first time in a while we’ve seen monthly single-family home sales fall in line with the 10-year average.
“Pent-up demand is gradually being released, aided by favourable mortgage rates and some increase in the availability of single-family product that is affordable to a broader range of buyers,” said Patricia Arsenault, Altus Group’s Executive Vice President, Data Solutions, in a release.
The other 3,424 new home sales were in the condo market. This sounds like a lot, and it is, and it isn’t. Compared to a year ago, new condo sales in October came in 3% lower, but looking long-term, this amount of sales is still 13% higher than the 10-year average.
The average price of a new single-family home in the GTA in October 2019 was $1,074,791, down 3.6% year-over-year. The average price of a new condo during the same time period was $833,827, which is 7.5% higher than a year ago.
As the price gap between single-family homes and condo units continues to close, we could see more buyers deciding to save for longer in order to buy a low-rise house instead of a condo unit. This would result in a drop in new home sales across the board.
As usual, there were many new home releases throughout October, so inventory increased to 19,718 units. This is a good thing because demand is strong and the population is forecasted to keep growing. There needs to be a wide enough selection of new homes to accommodate this growth.
“Based on population projections, it is clear that the demand for housing in the GTA is not going away,” said David Wilkes, BILD President & CEO. “That’s why BILD is very supportive of the provincial government’s efforts to achieve long-term balance in the housing market. The math is simple. We need to make the process of bringing new homes to market simpler, faster and fairer to help create more housing supply and a more affordable market.”
After a topsy-turvy 2018, the GTA’s new home market seemed to be in recovery mode for most of 2019, and now it looks like we’re going to be ending the year in good shape. We are extremely excited to see how the beginning of 2020 shapes up!
