Toronto housing market rises in Q2 of 2024, report finds
Toronto’s housing market started to pick up in the latter half of last year, as lower mortgage rates made it easier for homebuyers to make a purchase, a new report says.
There were 67,610 home sales in the country’s largest real estate market in 2024, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, or TRREB. That was 2.6 per cent higher than 2023 when the Bank of Canada was still raising interest rates to cool runaway inflation.
But after the central bank began cutting its benchmark interest rate in June, activity slowly started to increase. Sales steadily increased in the fall, and competition heated up for some single-family homes. Although the volume of sales fell 18.7 per cent from November to December, the last month of the year is traditionally quiet.
And home prices have remained fairly steady even though there have been a raft of homes on the market. There were 166,121 new listings in the Toronto region last year, which was 16.4 per cent higher than 2023. Meanwhile, the typical home price was $1,094,000 in December, 2024 compared with $1,090,200 in the same month in 2023.
The real estate industry expects momentum to rise heading into spring, which historically has been the most popular season to buy a home.
Not only are mortgage rates falling, the federal government’s easier borrowing policies went into effect last month and now allow buyers to put smaller down payments down on homes that cost more than $1-million. As well, the new rules allow first-time homebuyers to stretch out their mortgage payments over a longer period of time.
TRREB’s chief market analyst, Jason Mercer, said in the report that many prospective first-time buyers had remained on the sidelines because they were anticipating more interest rate cuts this year. He said the lack of these buyers impacted demand for condos, which are relatively cheaper than single-family homes.
Sales of detached and semi-detached houses were up about 4 per cent year over year, while sales of condos were down 2.7 per cent over the same period.
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail