Rising interest rates are still having an impact on the city's housing market
Home sales in Toronto were down by nearly 50% in December compared with the same month in 2021 as interest rate hikes continued to take their toll on the city’s once-scorching housing market.
The final month of the year saw 3,117 sales in Canada’s most populous city, a 48.2% drop over the previous December, according to new figures released by the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) on Thursday.
Homebuying activity in Toronto shot through the roof at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with home price appreciation also setting a red-hot pace, but a rapid cooldown across Toronto’s housing market has taken place amidst a series of rate increases by the Bank of Canada since March of last year. December sales plummeted by 31% compared with the previous month.
Overall, the Toronto market recorded 75,140 sales throughout the year. That was 38.2% lower than the final figure for 2021, when 121,639 properties changed hands in the city.
TRREB president Paul Baron nonetheless pointed to the fact that home prices had started to level off in the late summer after big declines in spring as a possible indicator that the “aggressive early market adjustment” could be nearing an end.
New listings for December were 4,074, a 21.3% drop from December 2021, while the December average selling price of just over $1.05 million was a 9.2% decline from the December 2021 average of just above $1.15 million.
