Urbanation releases 3rd quarter statistics
By Lucas on Nov 05, 2012
Urbanation, Canada’s leading condominium market research company, has released their look at high rise sales in the third quarter of 2012. As always, they provide an interesting peek at the Toronto new home industry.
The initial reports are not shocking for anyone who is involved with the real estate industry. Sales in the third quarter saw a decrease of 30 percent to a total of 3,317 units sold. There have been a total of 14,156 sales in the first three months of 2012.
“With slowing sales and a record level of unsold inventory in the market in the second quarter, condominium developers reacted quickly by delaying their project launches, especially in the 416 area,” says Ben Myers, Urbanation executive vice-president. “Just five projects launched in Toronto in Q3-2012, as developers chose to review their pricing assumptions and unit mix.”
That’s not exactly shocking. We interviewed Myers back in early 2012, when he predicted that despite the fears of oversupply, developers would pull back on inventory while the units currently in the market sell through. Unsold inventory has decreased by 5.2 percent against last quarter, which is already a fairly quick market correction.
Some other interesting stats provided by Ben and his staff
-The number of units under construction in the CMA set another market high at 56,336 units in 207 projects, with 89% of those units sold by the end of Q3-2012.
-The average sold index price increased in Q3-2012 to $530 psf in the Toronto CMA, an increase of 6.8% annually. The unsold index price also increased to $573 psf in the Toronto CMA, an increase of 2.0% annually.
-The resale condominium apartment market in the Toronto CMA realized 3,413 transactions in Q3-2012, down in comparison to both Q2-2012 (5,050) and Q3-2011 (4,400). The average resale index price remained flat in comparison to the second quarter at $407 psf.
“The change in the mortgage insurance rules may have forced many buyers to settle for smaller units then they had previously desired,” says Myers. “The number of resale transactions for units priced over $400,000 fell 40% compared to last quarter, while there was a 38% quarterly drop in units traded over 1,000 square feet.”
As always, Ben and his team at Urbanation provide some interesting statistics about the state of our market.
There is no doubt that things are not rocketing forward as aggressively as they have recently; however, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that the market is moving forward in a more regular, less hyperactive way than we have seen in the past few years.
