Analyzing the Market and Reporting The Data minus the Selling and Soliciting

We are Brokers who buy and sell Real Estate on behalf of our clients. We work in a sales industry.  Do you trust that we are reporting Real Estate News factually?

We personally find that we don’t like to feel pressured or sold too.  We find many people we talk to don’t like to be ‘sold.’  But we like to be serviced to reflect what our needs are and know with certainty that the information we are provided with is factual, credible, and honest; at all costs. Even if it costs the sale. We have built our business and network of trusted professionals on this premise. Don’t sell us, but service us.  So, in saying that, here are the service-level straight goods about our thoughts on TRREB’s most recent market report.

(Note: Paul majored in Geographic Information Systems at the University of Toronto. He is EXCELLENT at analyzing data.  It’s his background. Field of study.  And forte.)

When analyzing data, it’s important to ensure that we include context. The bigger picture. Data can be skewed and manipulated, and interpreted from a micro perspective which leads to generalizations that may actually be inaccurate and a non-representation of the bigger picture.  To prevent this, we are choosing not to compare 2022 to 2021, what we refer to as year-over-year comparisons. 2021 was a record-breaking year right across the board in sales prices and the number of transactions. A ‘bubble’, if you will. All current numbers compared to last year will be lower. Does this mean Chicken Little is here, and the Sky Is Falling? No. To counter this inaccurate conclusion, we are looking specifically at the 10-year historical average as a point of comparison.

We note a slight uptick and rebound in detached home sales in Toronto, relatively speaking. Although we would expect prices to have gone down month-over-month, given six consecutive interest rate increases this year, prices have actually stabilized for the past four months right across the GTA. Why is that? Well, new listings coming to the market have decreased by 25% compared to the 10-year average. We already knew that buyers were slowing down and holding off (hence the hot rental market and 25% increase in rental rates), but we now know that Sellers are slowing down and holding off as well.

It appears that both supply and demand have come down lockstep with one another, which has caused prices to stagnate. We are now experiencing the lowest real estate activity to date when compared to the 10-year average, as the number of properties sold is also down 42%, new listings are down 25%, and active listings (the number of listings on the market) is down 20%.

If we look at the month of October, sales are down 1.5% from last month.

What is our long-term perspective? Buyers have come down, but so have Sellers. They are choosing not to sell and are staying put. Inventory is down. We feel it is somewhat balanced given the reduced number of Sellers, but still hovering on the Buyers’ side.

Within our business pipeline, we have a number of people who are interested in listing and selling in the 2023 Spring Market. It will be interesting to see where the market is at that time after two more projected and consecutive interest rate increases. Will we see a glut of listings hit the market?  Or will buyers return as the inventory does?

As the buy and sell market has relatively returned, the rental market has softened a little bit. It needed to.  So if you are looking to lease, now might be a good time to start looking.

Any questions, shoot us a text, email or phone call.