Toronto Real Estate Sales UP 17%

GTA Realtors report December resale housing market data.

Greater Toronto Realtors reported 87,308 MLS® transactions in 2009 – a 17 per cent increase over 2008. This result included 5,541 sales in December. The 2009 result was in line with the healthy levels of sales experienced between 2004 and 2006, but lower than the record of 93,193 set in 2007.

Royal LePage forecasts market for 2010

Canadian real estate market to continue strong gains in the first half of 2010 with demand and supply finding balance in the second half of the year.

Canada’s residential real estate market is forecast to remain unusually strong through the first half of 2010 as economic conditions across the country improve and the stimulus impact of low interest rates continues to stoke demand, according to today’s Royal LePage House Price Survey and Market Survey Forecast. As confidence in the recovery builds in early 2010, increases in average house price levels and overall market activity are expected to continue. The gradual erosion of affordability driven by higher house prices and the expected late-year modest upward movement of interest rates, together with an improvement in listings supply as confidence improves, are expected to bring the market back into balance in the second half of the year, when home price increases are expected to moderate.

Source: Real Estate Intelligence

Canadians are generally quite conservative, so when the crisis hit in the States in 2008, we (collectively) just hunkered down and refused to sell or buy. Everything came to a stand-still. In addition to the American financial problems, we’ve had about 1.5 years of increasing interest rates. So, overall demand for properties had been dropping at that time.

Come summer 2009 however, and like my friends like to say, it was “the perfect storm” – low interest rates, pent up demand and realization that things aren’t that bad (at least yet, and at least in Canada).

Agents are still saying that there’s very little on the market in the Toronto core. Property values in some areas in Ontario have increased 40% (!, Pickering) in the last year. Not my area, thankfully. I’d be selling fast if that happened here. Sounds like a bubble.

I got a letter today from an agent specializing in downtown condo sales. The letter stated that there haven’t been any units for sale in our building in over 3 months! We constantly get calls from agents saying they have buyers interested in this area.

It may speak more about desirability of this particular building (certainly, gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling) but may also be an indication of the overall state of the market. Still not much for sale, at least downtown Toronto. Yes, there’s a lot of new developments but most aren’t due until summer 2011 and later. Not to mention the registration process, those units won’t go on sale until 2012.