The average price of a resold home in Greater Toronto shot up to $770,745 in January, according to data released by the city's real estate board -- an increase of more than $40,000 from December, and a jump of 22.3 per cent from a year earlier.
Single-family homes rose by $84,000 in price from December to January in Toronto, to $1.34 million. In the suburban 905 region, they rose $108,000 in a month, to $999,000.
With single-family homes increasingly out of range, homebuyers are turning to condos. Condo sales in the GTA increased 26.7 per cent year-over-year in January, compared to increases of 7.8 per cent and 7.2 per cent for detached homes and townhouses. Semi-detached home sales were down 5.8 per cent.
Those slower sales are due to a lack of supply, the industry says.
“We have a shortage of housing supply in the GTA that is approaching crisis levels,” said Bryan Tuckey, CEO of the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), last week.
“Housing is selling as quickly as the industry can bring it to market and the lack of developable land that is serviced with infrastructure, excessive red tape, out-of-date zoning and NIMBYism are hindering our ability to bring more to the market.”
A growing body of evidence suggests some of the hot demand in Toronto's housing market stems from foreign buyers, investors and house-flippers. A survey carried out by the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) indicated that about 5 per cent of homes in Greater Toronto are sold to foreign buyers, a number some experts say is probably lowballed.
"There is a serious supply problem in the GTA."
— Jason Mercer, Toronto Real Estate Board
Regardless of foreign buyers, local homeowners are increasingly keeping their homes off the market, either out of fear of searching for a new home in a hot market, or out of hope of selling for more later.
Jason Mercer, TREB's director of market analysis, said the number of active listings on the board's MLS System at the end of January was essentially half of what was reported as available at the same time last year.
"That statistic, on its own, tells us that there is a serious supply problem in the GTA,'' he said. "The result will be very strong price growth for all home types again this year.''
Here is Toronto's housing market, by the numbers.
$1,336,640
— The average price of a single-family home in Toronto
$999,102
— The average price of a single-family home in the suburban 905 region.
$471,409
— The average price of a condo in Toronto.
$379,169
— The average price of a condo in the suburban 905 region.
11.8%
— The percentage increase in home sales, over the past year in Toronto.
-18.1%
— The percentage decline in new listings in Toronto from January 2016 to January 2017
— With files from The Canadian Press
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