Toronto Real Estate Board reports record number of homes sold in July
10,000.
That’s the number of transactions the Toronto Real Estate Board recorded for July 2016. (Well, technically 9,989 homes sales – but what’s 11 properties when you’re trying to make a point?)
As if that record number of transactions wasn’t enough, the MLS Home Price Index (HPI) Composite Benchmark was up 16.7 per cent from July 2015.
What does that mean in dollar terms exactly? Well, if you were throwing down your hard earned cash for an average ‘home’ in the GTA in July 2015 it would have cost you $608,875. Last month? A cool $709,825. That’s a rise of $8,400 per month. We’re guessing that no matter how well you’re doing at your job you can’t keep up with that kind of raise.
See also
- All the places near Toronto you can buy a house on a condo budget
- Bank of Canada warns Toronto home prices might be unsustainable
And don’t even get us started on the price of a detached home. Those rose some 21.1 per cent in the GTA in the last year, meaning that the average detached home now runs for $952,983 ($1,202,753 in the 416).
Here’s the rest of the depressing news (that is, if you don’t already own a home). You’ll notice everything has gone up:
In a news release, Toronto Real Estate Board President Larry Cerqua had this to say:
“GTA REALTORS® have been working very hard on behalf of their buyer clients to help them find a home meeting their needs. Unfortunately, listings for single-detached and semi-detached houses and town houses continue to be in short supply. The result has been an increase in pent-up demand and annual rates of price increases well above the rate of inflation. Housing policy is now top of mind for all levels of government. Policy makers need to be focusing on solutions to the sustained lack of low-rise inventory throughout the GTA.”
In a very basic sense, many people are still buying and fewer people are selling. Supply, meet demand.
Or, as Jason Mercer, Toronto Real Estate Board’s Director of Market Analysis, put it:
“Relatively strong labour market conditions, above-inflation average income growth, and record low borrowing costs have kept many households confident about purchasing a home. As long as very strong buying intentions are up against an extreme shortage of listings, expect home price growth to greatly outpace the rate of inflation.”
But this has to end, right? RIGHT!?
Not that we particularly want to be there when it does…
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