The GTA New Home Industry: A Year in Review
By Lucas on Dec 01, 2014
It’s December, and you know what that means; Newinhomes.com spends the entire month looking back on the year and revisiting the best industry moments of 2014!
The Greater Toronto Area’s (GTA) new home market made some serious strides over the last 12 months, and it was over a time when many people were expecting some sort of crash or burst. Despite a flurry of negative headlines, the new home market thrived and we even had a few record breaking months!
Our Year in Review series isn’t only about sales though. The industry has been gradually transforming, and 2014 saw some big changes. Builders and developers are getting more creative when it comes to marketing strategies, architecture, interior designs, and thanks to the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), some new boutique condos will even be built with a different material (more on that later!).
One of the main topics of discussion in the industry this year was affordability. At the very beginning of 2014, industry consultant Barry Lyon predicted that this would be the year of incentives, with a strong focus on attracting first-time homebuyers and end-users. Through our tracking of the industry, we would say that this was definitely the case throughout the first half of the year, but midway through summer, the average price for a new low-rise home in the GTA hit $680,529 (which was an all-time high). From that point, there was no slowing down. The average price of a new low-rise home broke the record again in October, reaching $694,629.
BILD President and CEO Bryan Tuckey attributes the rising price to a constrained land supply, outdated planning approval processes, and increasing government development charges throughout the GTA. Clearly, first-time homebuyers didn’t play a big role in the low-rise sector, but this definitely caused a surge in the condo market. Select townhome communities and downtown condo developments became the only affordable options for first-time homebuyers. Within these projects, you will still find many incentives targeted towards first-timers and end-users.
We can not wait to look back into the archives and dig up old memories of the past year with you. Stay tuned for our top blog posts, best industry parties, our favourite designs, top low-rise developments, top high-rise development, and much more!
