Usually by this this time in February we are normally gearing up for the spring market to start. One problem however...Seller’s didn’t get the memo. Like most of last year we continue to struggle with low inventories, Is it economic uncertainty that is causing this or is affordability the likely culprit within the freehold sector? Despite a continued increase of listings over the last few weeks it is important to note that overall listings for freehold homes is down significantly from last year, despite the influences of a brutal winter of snow storms and freezing rain. This is not the news that buyers want to hear as they are still out there waiting to purchase.
Real estate disrupters come and go. Many of these new “disrupters”, some coming here from the USA will offer you a quick estimate using an algorithm without doing a market analysis. Are they overlooking the emotional aspect of selling a home and are they just order takers? The market in the last couple of years was booming. You would list a house and it would sell within days. Now in some areas, realtors need to brush up on their negotiating skills and a lot of that comes with experience and training.
The Toronto Real Estate Board released its market outlook for 2019 this week and the forecast is all good news! It’s predicting the average sale price to be about 4% higher for 2019 and a moderate increase in total sales to come in around 83,000 ends, compared to 77,375 sale ends we had in 2018. It’s also encouraging to see a slight increase in the selling price for The City of Toronto in January, coming in at $777,674 up 1.4% compared to January 2018, and up 1.9% from December. Taking into account the entire GTA region the number of transactions edged upwards and inline with TREB’s forecast for higher sales in 2019.
The Toronto Real Estate Board released its market outlook for 2019 this week and the forecast is all good news! It’s predicting the average sale price to be about 4% higher for 2019 and a moderate increase in total sales to come in around 83,000 ends, compared to 77,375 sale ends we had in 2018. It’s also encouraging to see a slight increase in the selling price for The City of Toronto in January, coming in at $777,674 up 1.4% compared to January 2018, and up 1.9% from December. Taking into account the entire GTA region the number of transactions edged upwards and inline with TREB’s forecast for higher sales in 2019.
Toronto is digging itself out of a major snowfall this week and now a polar vortex of extreme cold has moved in. Looks like the spring market will start a little later this year. So far in January the market has been “slow”. In traditional years that was typical for the first month of the year, but we have been spoiled with the last couple of years where house hunters were eagerly pouncing on listings as they appeared in January. FOMO ‘fear of missing out’ has calmed a little. This is not the case for all of Toronto. Certain neighbourhoods are still crazy busy, especially Riverdale/Leslieville where 75% of the properties sold last week in a bidding war.