B.J. Johnson and the guys at Real Estate Value, Inc. are back with another article about the housing market in Toronto.
The latest, published in July 2017, is a detailed look at how housing prices have soared across the Greater Toronto Area, with a focus on the Greater Hamilton Area.
Here’s what the latest news means for real estate in the city:Toronto is home to nearly a quarter of the Canadian population and is the most expensive city in the country for buying and selling real estate.
The median price for a home in Toronto is currently $1.2 million, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA).
That’s up $1,600 from the same month a year ago.
The city’s median home price is up almost $700,000 from the June 2017 peak.
But the boom is still in its infancy.
At the end of July, the average price for an MLS condo was $1 million, up $500,000, and the median home sales price was $2.6 million, down $700.
That’s a significant drop.
The number of homes sold fell nearly 7 per cent in July from a year earlier, according the CREA.
The condo market is still relatively strong, with the average condo selling for $1-million in July, up almost 11 per cent from the prior year.
The average price of a home for sale in Toronto last month was $924,000.
“With the economy still in the doldrums, there is no room for growth in the GTA’s housing market,” CREA vice president of research and analytics Joe Salazar said in a statement.
“It is now even harder for the market to maintain the momentum that it had in the spring and summer.”
While the condo market in the Greater City is strong, there are some concerns.
While sales prices are down, they still tend to be higher in the condo city than the surrounding area.
That means the real estate market is likely to remain relatively flat for a time.
And while sales in Toronto are generally well-received, some are concerned that the pace of new listings may not match demand.
The real estate boom in Toronto and the GTA is being fueled by a number of factors, including the influx of foreign investors and increased demand for condos.
“There are a lot of investors and buyers coming to Toronto.
We are seeing a lot more international money coming into the GTA,” said Salazar.
“There’s a lot going on.”
The realtor who spoke with CBC News, who requested anonymity, said that the market has experienced a “double whammy” of foreign buyers, especially from the Middle East, and more foreign-born buyers.
“We have a lot on the back end that needs to be sorted out,” the realtor said.
“The new foreign buyers are coming in from Middle Eastern countries and the number of foreign-buyers is growing at a rapid pace.”
A number of the new foreign-owned properties are also under construction or under construction, and many are slated to open in the coming years.
A lot of them are in Toronto, and it is not unusual for new buildings to pop up in Toronto just as new condo buildings are coming up.
The condo market has been on fire in the Toronto area for the past two years.
The real estate website Trulia recently released its annual condo report for 2017.
The Toronto market saw a 7.9 per cent increase in condo sales and an 8.5 per cent decrease in sales for condos, compared to the same period last year.
Toronto real estate is also seeing more international buyers.
It is also the hottest market for buying or selling Canadian real estate assets.
According to CREA, foreign investment in Canada in 2017 was $5.6 billion, up 17 per cent over the same year last year, with $1 billion of that coming from China.
In Toronto, the realty industry is seeing a large number of new foreign investment deals and foreign ownership of condos, condos and land, and foreign investment is projected to be at the core of many of the major real estate projects going forward.
Salazar said that while the current condo boom is “a good thing,” the city still needs to diversify its real estate portfolio.
“In the next couple of years, we are going to see a lot less foreign investment coming in, which means that our condo market will be undervalued in the next few years,” Salazar told CBC News.
“I’m worried that we will lose our competitive advantage.
The value of our condo business is the value of the market that we can sell our properties to.
We need to diversified our portfolio, and that is something we are doing well right now.”