Toronto home prices hold steady but detached homes fall by almost 8%

It’s not the spring real estate watchers were expecting eight weeks ago. But even as home sales fell through the floor in April, prices held steady in the Toronto area — up 0.1 per cent or $1,000 year over year with an average transaction price of $821,392.

A continued decline in the number of homes listed on the market relative to the number of sales helped stabilize prices in the midst of the unprecedented public health lockdown, said the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) on Tuesday.

Listings that were tight going into the COVID-19 lockdown in March, dropped 64.1 per cent in April compared to the same month last year. Sales plunged 67 per cent year over year in the same period to 2,975 across the GTA.

“While the onset of COVID-19 has understandably shifted market conditions and resulted in average selling prices coming off their March peak, there has continued to be enough active buyers relative to available listings to keep prices in line with last year’s levels,” said the board’s chief market analyst Jason Mercer.

The top and bottom ends of the markets saw the largest declines.

The average price of a detached house in Toronto fell 7.8 per cent to $1.25 million in April, compared to last year. Regionwide, detached homes dipped 3.5 per cent to average $983,630.

GTA condo prices fell 1.7 per cent including a 10.6 per cent drop in Durham Region and 4 per cent decline in Toronto.

Due to a strong first quarter overall, the average price of a detached house this year to date remains 9.1 per cent above last year at $1.01 million. Condo prices this year to date averaged 13.8 per cent more than the first four months of 2019, at a price of $645,859.
Semi-detached and town homes continued to see gains even in April, up 7 per cent and 3.8 per cent respectively across the GTA. Townhouses in York and Durham regions sold for nearly 8 per cent more year over year on average.

At the same time, the real estate board’s benchmark Home Price Index, which measures typical homes with similar characteristics, showed a 10 per cent gain. That suggests that there were fewer high-end real estate sales transacted this April compared to the same month last year, said the real estate board.

The plunge in housing sales was apparent nearly two weeks ago when the real estate board issued an unusual interim April report showing that transactions were down 69 per cent year over year in the first 17 days of the month.

Rentals were also down in April on the real estate board’s Multiple Listings Service — dropping 57.9 per cent for one-bedroom condos and 54.4 per cent for two-bedroom units. Average rents also declined by 2.7 per cent on one-bedroom apartments to $2,107 and down 4.1 per cent year over year to $2,705 on average.

Real estate board CEO John DiMichele said the recovery of the housing market won’t necessarily follow the same pattern of previous recessions and events.

“A key factor for the housing market recovery will be a broader reopening of the economy, which will result in an improving employment picture and a resurgence in consumer confidence,” he said.

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