If you’ve been tinkering with the idea of giving up your rented pad to buy a home, now might be a decent time — at least in Toronto.
Competition among buyers in Canada’s largest city has cooled significantly over the past year, according to the real estate brokerage and analysis firm Zoocasa, with figures now suggesting that Toronto is no longer a “seller’s market” but a “balanced market.”
“Housing competition heated up this fall across major Ontario markets despite new pandemic restrictions being rolled out by the Ontario government to slow the spread of COVID-19,” reads a new report released by Zoocasa on Thursday.
“There was an annual uptick in home sales across the province with several real estate boards including the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) reporting a record-breaking month of sales in October.”
True as this may be, there were still a few Ontario cities in which the sales-to-new-listings ratio (SNLR) showed less, not more competition among buyers.
All of them are in the Greater Toronto Area.
How competitive is real estate in Ontario? Find out in our new report, out today, looking at 35 markets across the province: https://t.co/W3EGEPHRpP
In terms of the SNLR, anything above 60 per cent suggests a seller’s market. An SNLR between 50 and 60 per cent depicts a market where supply and demand are relatively balanced. An SNLR under 40 would mean a buyer’s market.
There are currently zero buyer’s markets in Ontario based on this metric.
“Our findings show that 30 of the 35 markets included in our analysis exhibit strong sellers’ market conditions, where high demand and a low number of new listings meant that buyers faced strong competition for listings,” notes Zoocasa.
“This is up from 27 markets that exhibited sellers’ market conditions in October 2019. The remaining markets all exhibited balanced market conditions, and notably, each of these balanced markets is located within the GTA.”
Toronto’s SNLR as of October 20202 was just 45 per cent, according to Zoocasa, down from a seller’s market rate of 66 per cent during the same month in 2019.
And yet, demand for detached homes has been steadily rising since the pandemic hit in March — so what gives?
“It’s important to keep in mind that these figures are influenced by condo market activity, where sales have declined amidst the pandemic while new listings increased by more than double (109 per cent) year-over-year,” explains Zoocasa.
Of all 35 cities ranked, only Toronto, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, Markham and Mississauga could be considered to have balanced markets as of October 2020.
The rest of Ontario, meanwhile, “exhibited strong sellers’ market conditions in October, with an SNLR of 80% or more.”
Four markets, in particular, saw a marked increase in demand with SNLR rates of more than 100 per cent detected. They are: Sudbury (SNLR of 100 per cent), Niagara Falls (105 per cent), Thunder Bay (108 per cent) and St. Catherines (112 per cent).
Here’s a full breakdown of the top buyer’s and seller’s markets across Ontario right now:
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
