Blog

Monthly Letter January 2020

1/12/2021

Dear Friend Writer and philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." If you want to know why the market has been so active, (prices up 14.3% this year) and what is going to happen to Toronto real estate, let’s look at the recent past.  For the last several years Toronto has experienced a severe housing shortage as immigra...

Monthly Letter December 2020

1/5/2021

Dear Friend, Another record month of real estate sales for the GTA and Covid 19 had nothing to do with it! There are 5 major factors that are keeping the real estate market at record levels: 1. Ridiculously low interest rates (1.5%) attracting new buyers into the market who can now qualify to buy. 2. A strong economic recovery for many business sectors. 3. Many Canadians ”cash” rich ...

Monthly Letter November 2020

11/5/2020

Dear Friend   The real estate market continues its upward trend as home sales in the GTA were up again year-over-year for the fourth month in a row! Toronto Real Estate Board members sold 10,563 residential homes  in October,  up 25.1 % compared to 8,445 transactions in October 2019. Sales and new listings reached record levels for the month of October, but sales outstripped new lis...

Monthly Letter October 2020

10/8/2020

Dear Friend,   A record month for the GTA! 11,083 homes sold in September, 42.3 % more than a year ago. As of the end of September, despite Covid, sales were up 1% compared to the same period last year. Proof of the desire for home ownership in Toronto!   Here are two factors that brought many more buyers into the marketplace. The Canadian government gave out 53 billion dollars in aid t...

Monthly Letter September 2020

9/10/2020

Dear Friend, As we enter the Labor Day weekend, restaurants have opened up sidewalk patios, (and are busy), airplanes are flying, daycares are open, and parents and children are getting ready for the resumption of school! Yes, we have new protocols, we are all wearing masks, washing our hands more frequently, social distancing, but a new state of normalcy has returned.   This is also reflec...

Monthly Letter August 2020

8/12/2020

All of the Covid based pent up demand for homes exploded in July as 11,081 homes sold in Toronto, a 29.5 % increase over July 2019 (8,555 solds). The average home price for the year as of July 31 was $903,617, a 10.3% increase since December 31 2019. The number of homes available for sale (15,018) was down 16% compared to July 2019, and that represents about 1 month of inventory. In other words, t...

Monthly Letter July 2020

7/15/2020

Working throughout June, one could feel that the market was extremely active with multiple offers and activity at a high rate. But we were all quite surprised when the final numbers came in from the Toronto Real Estate Board showing that June’s sales (8,701) were only down 1.4% from June of 2020 (8,826). We knew that there has been a huge pent-up demand for homes and that demand exploded in ...

Monthly Letter June 2020

6/17/2020

The Toronto real estate market experienced a very pleasant but unexpected jump in sales last month. Toronto real estate board members reported the sale of 4,606 homes which was only down 53.7% compared to the month before where the number of sales were down 67% from April 2019.   The biggest surprise came in the form of Toronto prices. Despite headline-grabbing negativity about Toronto p...

Monthly Letter May 2020

6/17/2020

April statistics are in and I must admit, I am very surprised. Toronto Real Estate Board members sold 2,975 homes through the MLS system. Each home sold has someone who purchased it, so there were a total of 5,950 transactions. Yes those numbers are down 67% compared to April 2019 but much higher than I expected, given the circumstances. The number of new homes coming on the market was also down 6...

Monthly Letter April 2020

6/17/2020

I hope you and your family are staying safe and healthy during these trying times. It is a difficult time in our history, however, we are very fortunate that it happened in an era of high technology. The internet and cell phones allow many businesses like Amazon, Supermarkets, takeout food delivery services and others to continue to provide services to us, which all limits our exposure to the viru...