Residential sales in both markets increased by more than 10% year-over-year in August
Earlier this week, the Bank of Canada kept the overnight rate at 1.75% for the seventh straight policy meeting, stating that “the current degree of monetary policy stimulus remains appropriate.”
Said announcement came amid the national economy’s consistent performance in recent months. The impact of greater purchasing power, along with consumers steadily adapting to the pressures of the B-20 stress test, has become especially apparent in home sales activity in the nation’s largest markets.
Data from the Toronto Real Estate Board indicated that in the GTA, residential transactions had a 13% year-over-year increase in August.
By asset class, single detached housing was the most popular in the region last month, with a 21.3% annual increase. Semi-detached homes saw a nearly 12% increase in transactions, while condos had 4%.
All of these accompanied a 3% annual decline in new listings in August, along with a 3.6% uptick in the average home price in the GTA, ending up at $792,611.
“This reflects the fact that demand for more expensive home types was very low in 2018 and has rebounded to a certain degree in 2019, albeit not back to the record levels experienced in 2016 and the first quarter of 2017,” TREB president Michael Collins noted in a statement, as quoted by
In Vancouver, residential sales accelerated by 15.7% year-over-year last month, with the benchmark price fell by 8.3% annually to $993,300. This was the lowest level since May 2017, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.
“Prices are still softening, but at a much slower pace than they had been previously,” board president Ashley Smith stated in an interview with The Globe and Mail. “Affordability is still an issue, and we’ll be seeing more sales in the lower-price categories.”
“We’re getting back to more of a normalized market,” Smith added. “We’ve seen an uptick in the number of sales. What that will equate to in terms of price is to be determined. It’s really going to be dependent on the behaviour of buyers and sellers.”
