New home sales help fuel strong rebound after long winter
GREATER TORONTO – After one of the longest and coldest Canadian winters in recent memory, low interest rates and plenty of home-building activity have inspired a red-hot sales surge for Canadian real estate – one that has economists boosting their forecasts for the country’s housing sector.
In fact, the market’s early-summer rebound has been so strong that even TD has “upgraded” its price growth projections to “an average of five to six per cent” by the end of 2014.After three months of posting consecutive gains in home sales activities, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) posted an astonishing 5.9 per cent increase in home sales from April to May 2014 – the largest month-to-month increase reported in nearly four years. Part of the reason for May’s sales surge was the persistence of winter weather, which caused home buyers to pause their searches, and precipitated a first-quarter decline in the home-building industry.
“Over the past 25 years, that widespread a monthly sales increase has been recorded only a handful of times,” CREA president Beth Crosbie told Bloomberg last month.
GTA: TREB numbers show “Spring Market” was even hotter than last year
Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) president Dianne Usher reported in early June that Greater Toronto’s “buyers have been more active this spring compared to last year,” noting that “borrowing costs have remained at or near record lows over the past few months.”
TREBs sales numbers for early June definitely show a hotter-than-usual spring market, with 4,938 home sales taking place in the GTA between June 1st and 14th – reflecting a strong 10.1 per-cent-increase over the same period back in 2013.
Looking at home types, two of the strongest contributors to that increase were townhouses and detached homes in the 416, which both separately enjoyed an impressive year-over-year sales increase of 23.7 per cent.
High-rise sector sees new home sales soar above 10-year average in early 2014
RealNet’s latest Executive Summary, published in May and made available publicly via BILD GTA, show that 2014 yielded promising year-over-year sales increases for the period of January to May. While new low-rise homes saw 7,516 sales during that span, the really impressive numbers came from new high-rise sales, which sold 8,305 units – a 25 per cent jump over the 6,229 sold between January and May in 2013.
That number also puts January-May high rise sales back above the 10-year average (7,223), as investors, downsizers, and first-time buyers jump into Toronto’s booming new condominium market.
Looking ahead to the rest of the year, high-rise inventory should improve as construction resumes after the long winter stalled progress somewhat for the GTA’s condominium and new home developers. GTA Real Estate News has the inside scoop on a number of new and exciting projects coming out this fall, so be sure to bookmark this site for the latest new development information.
