TORONTO – Toronto’s continually-escalating average home price experienced a 7.6 per cent year-over-year increase during the month of March – the major market’s highest such increase, in any month, since the Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index began recording them in 2005.
Widely regarded as an accurate reflection of national housing market trends, the Index is based on data from public land registries. In addition to tracking changes in Toronto’s Census Metropolitan Area (an area that includes a swath of surrounding municipalities such as Markham, Mississauga, and Ajax), the Index also covers 10 other major Canadian markets – a list that includes major players like Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.
In March, eight of those markets (the exceptions being Victoria, Ottawa-Gatineau, and Hamilton) experienced a month-to-month increase in average home price. Vancouver – which shares Toronto’s real estate trends of growing demand and limited supply – joined our market in breaking its year-over-year increase record, recording an impressive 5.3 per cent jump.
According to the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB)’s Market Watch report issued April 7, sales activity across the GTA also experienced a year-over-year boost in March – posting a non-record-threatening, but still promising, increase of 5.5 per cent (a total of 8,940 transactions for the month).
“Home sales increased compared to last year as the cost of home ownership remained affordable, with lower interest rates going a long way to mitigate the effect of rising home prices,” said TREB president Paul Etherington in a statement issued alongside the report.
“However, a substantial amount of pent-up demand remains in place, especially as it relates to low-rise market segments. This suggests that strong competition between buyers, which has fuelled strong price growth so far this year, will continue to be experienced throughout the spring”
Indeed, according to TREB’s numbers, Toronto’s strong home price growth for the month was led by low-rise homes in the urban “416” region – where detached homes experienced a year-over-year price increase of 15.9 per cent (breaking the million-dollar mark for the first time in the market’s history), and townhome prices went up by a similarly impressive 13.1 per cent.
On a nationwide scale, the month of March yielded housing price gains of 0.3 per cent from February, and 5.3 per cent year-over-year.
