November 2014 Market Review

The Toronto Real Estate Board has reported the November 2014 market stats. Sales volume was up over November 2013 by 2.6% , to 6,519 residential transactions. New listings were down 5.3% over the same period; only 8,789 new listings were posted last month. Total active listings were also down 8.5%, to 14,717. As I have written before, the Toronto real estate market really needs more than 20,000 active listings (22,000-24,000 is great) to maintain ‘liquidity’ (i.e. enough listings to allow folks to buy and sell without worrying about weak supply constraining them). Continued strong demand in the face of tight supply helped to drive up the average selling price by 7.4% to $577,936.

Of course, some of the current supply shortage is seasonal. We always see the number of active listings (and sales) dip after the fall market. It starts in November; then December and January are significantly slower due to a number of factors – weather and the busy holiday season being the big ones. The market is usually quite quiet over the last couple of weeks in December and the first week or two in January.

That said, there are always thousands of properties on the market, and plenty of interested buyers, so the market doesn’t go completely into hibernation. With Toronto being a large, busy and multicultural city, there’s just no stopping real estate! Folks buy and sell for myriad reasons – job change or transfer, lifestyle change, you name it. There will still be plenty of decent listings coming out over the winter months. Prices may seem to dip ever so slightly compared to the busy fall months, but they will still be up over the same period last year.

All in all, we are wrapping up another solid year for the Toronto real estate market. Through the end of November TREB has recorded 88,462 sales, up 6.6% over 2013. It’s reasonable at this point to expect in the range of 92,000-93,000 sales for the year. The record sales year (number of transactions) was 2007, when 93,193 were recorded. If we don’t match that this year, we’ll be a not-too-distant 2nd place. (2011 is currently in ‘second place’; 89,096 sales were reported that year. We’ll pass that any day now.) I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, call me if you need any help with your real estate goals!

simonmilberry
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