April 2013's Toronto/GTA Housing Market Results - Has it Peaked?

By Penny Elizabeth Dutkowski, Broker
Before delving below the surface of April's results we’ll begin the review of GTA’s resale housing market sales activity which shows that sales came in 26% higher than March and 539 units or 5.2% below that of April 2012.

The next chart depicts the allocation of these 539 units by price range and property type. It’s notable that the detached $800-900k and $900-1,000k are the only price ranges to record a sales gain over April 2012 and by 47 and 30 units respectively.

A two month surge in condominium apartment sales resulted in a YoY pick up of 28 units within the $600 to 1,000k price ranges with 15 of those within $700-800k. Meanwhile, for the first time ever, 11 buyers plunked down more than $1.7 million dollars for their condos, 10 of whom parted with more than $2 million which caused a gain of 9 units YoY.

Unit sales gains for all property types were restricted to the $5-600k; $8-900k and $9-1,000k ranges which means that townhouses, semi-detached and co-operatives lost ground in April. Nevertheless, median prices increased month over month by $3,000 for detached; $3,500 for condo apartments and $8,000 for all property types - $560,000; $311,000 and $445,000 respectively.

Despite the price gains as noted above, a continued erosion of unit sales can only sustain the price levels if listings fall dramatically and as can be seen from Chart 1A, so far for the year they're well above those of 2011 and 2012. And even though multiple offers are being given headlines, the propensity of past years to under price properties has taken a back seat to the more balanced approach of market value pricing. In other words, sellers aren't hedging their bets that the non-competitive buyers whose offers only serve to dissuade serious buyers from negotiating, will materialize.   

Given the chart to the left, I do believe that price wise the condominium apartment market has reached its peak for the year, possibly the detached market also with any further price gains fuelled only by semi-detached and townhomes.

As can be seen, the median for all dwelling types increased by a mere 2.5% and detached a scant .9% since their April 2012 previous high while condominium apartments are 1.4% below its May 2012 high and just manages to exceed its 2011 high by one-half percent.

To find out how your area performed in April 2013: