It was with some sadness that we heard the news this week of the death of Wiarton Willy, the lovable groundhog that has predicted with less than perfect results whether we would be free of the grip of winter or due for a prolonged cold spell. And, as we thought fondly of Willy we were reminded of one of our favourite non-real estate movies starring Bill Murray – Groundhog Day. If Bill Murray was a Realtor® he would be living a version of Groundhog Day today. Waking up this morning and looking at the trend in sales he might think he was back in March. Listings and sales are up in condos and the freehold market and more importantly the percentage of properties selling above their list price reached 40% in both the condo and freehold markets. While 40% of sales above list may still be far from the Spring days of 80-90% of deals selling above their advertised price it is certainly an interesting trend that we will be watching carefully.
Ground Control to Major Tom, take your protein pills and put your helmet on. And just like that the Fall market has started. In case you have been away this summer it might be worth a quick recap on just where we are in the real estate world. After a rocking great start to the year with record sales through April the provincial government created their Fair Housing Plan, including their new rules on rental properties and a foreign buyers tax. Not to be outdone, the federal government then joined the chorus with not one but two increases to the prime interest rate that the banks were only too happy to embrace and have begun to hum the tune of stricter borrowing rules that we have heard before. While the municipal government has kept out of the legislative choir it seems they are mostly hoping all these measures to cool the market don’t work too well, because gosh they really need all that income from the land transfer tax.
Back to school in September always feels like the beginning of a new year for real estate. We are all prepping and preparing for the Fall Market. So many predictions are made but time will tell us how it will all unfold. The Toronto Real Estate Board stats came out the other day and the average cost of a home in August was $732,292 up by three percent compared to August 2016.The number of new listings entered into the MLS system was down by 6.7% year-over-year. Home sales in August were down 34.8%. While we might be seeing clouds forming on the horizon, summer real estate numbers aren't always the best indicators of where the market is going.