Buying a new GTA home will likely set you back around $1.5 million

If homes in the GTA feel more expensive than ever, that’s because they are, and the price for your typical new GTA home just hit a record high.

A new report from the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) revealed that last month, the price of a “typical” new single-family home in the GTA —  also known as the benchmark price — has risen 29.4% over the past 12 months to a record high of $1,443,638.

New condos didn’t skip the rising trend either. The benchmark price for these homes went up 8.3% over the past year to $1,064,317.

With increased prices also came a strong number of sales for the month of March. In total, 5,003 new residential properties changed hands, which is an increase of 27% from March of last year, and a 37% increase over the 10-year average.

Condos alone accounted for 3,297 of those sales, which is an 11% increase from March 2020. This marks the second-highest number of condo apartment sales for the month of March in the past 20 years.

“The new condominium apartment market picked up the pace in March as the spring market got underway,” said Ryan Wyse, manager of analytics and data solutions for Altus Group, the company that provided the new home market data. “The number of units in new projects launched and the number of sales were both well above the March average of the past 10 years, and those newly launched projects saw particularly strong sales at opening.”

BILD

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Sales are continuing to outpace new inventory, with the remaining inventory decreasing in March compared to previous months.

“The March new home sales figures prove what we’ve known all along: demand for housing in this region isn’t going anywhere,” said BILD President and CEO Dave Wilkes. “Even as we continue to battle the third wave of the pandemic, it is vital that we don’t lose sight of the long-term housing needs of the GTA and that we continue to work to remove barriers to building more supply.”

During the pandemic, construction costs for new builds have skyrocketed due to supply chain issues. Whether those prices drop off when things return to normal remains to be seen.