Ah September. Just as we predicted, and the fall real estate market is off! The floodgates are open and new listings are finally coming to market. The question again is do you list low and create a bidding war or list at where you think it will sell? If you ask the agents you will get mixed reviews. But if you look at the statistics the way to go is to list low. A property in the west end that was listed for $899,000 sold in 2 days. They had over 80 booked showings and generated 4 bully offers and sold for $1,410,000! Was it priced too low? We say yes. So now that house has set a precedent for pricing. It is encouraging to see a continued resurgence in the demand for ownership housing.
Parents unite. You made it through the first week of school. Even though mother earth is fooling us with hot summer temperatures, our minds are shifting from the lazy days at the cottage to the reality that the fall market has kicked into gear. And just like every year after the labour day weekend, agents are busy prepping and staging to get their listings out. After price declines for much of 2018, home sales in Toronto started rising again this summer. Buyers hoping that this year's stress test would bring about big price breaks will be disappointed. It seems several of them came to that realization earlier this summer with month-to month increases and have jumped back into the market.
No question this has been a hot, hot summer and some long periods of drought. The Toronto real estate market is also suffering through a long period of listing drought. "The annual rate of sales growth out-paced the annual rate of new listings. We only have slightly more than two-and-a-half months of inventory in the TREB market as a whole, and less than two months of inventory in the City of Toronto. This means that despite the fact the sales remain off the record highs from 2016 and 2017, many GTA neighbourhoods continue to suffer from lack of inventory. This could present a problem if demand continues to accelerate over the next year, which is expected. Jason Mercer- Director of market analysis TREB.