Tuesday, May 14, 2019 / by Sally Niu
GTA Real Estate Market At A Glance - April & Q1, 2019
The Toronto Real Estate Board released the April and the first quarter of 2019 GTA real estate transaction data in their latest reports.
Interpreted intelligently, these statistics could provide invaluable insights to home buyers, sellers, tenants, and landlords alike. From determining your buying or selling strategies, adjusting timelines, to setting up realistic expectations, and predicting investment outcomes, these insights can guide consumers to act from an educated position.
Drawing on more than 50 years of expertise in real estate, Boiron Group summarized the three TREB reports into a bite-sized digest so you can be better informed of today’s market in no time.
Condominiums, followed by semi-detached and townhouses, continued to drive price growth. Detached house prices dipped again, especially in the suburbs.
According to TREB’s April Market Watch report, the average selling price in the GTA increased by 1.9% year-over-year to $820,148. This represented the strongest annual rate of growth we have seen in 2019. Compared to March 2019, the average selling price also edged up by 1.1%, on a preliminary seasonally adjusted basis.Sales caught up from a slow start to the year, but still well below past decade’s level.

TREB suggests that as the market conditions continued to tighten, an acceleration in price growth could be in the loom.
The number of new listings went up by 8% year-over-year. However, compared to the double-digit growth rate in sales, the market calls for a much larger inventory to keep up with the demand.
“It should be noted that growth in new listings is not keeping pace with sales. This points to the ongoing housing supply issue in the GTA. In this regard TREB welcomes the provincial government’s Housing Supply Action Plan announced last week to reduce red tape and improve the mix of housing types, ”said TREB President Garry Bhaura.
Read the full TREB April Market Watch report here.
The rental market stayed strong in Q1, with growth in all three metrics: price, inventory and number of leases.
In the Rental Market Report for Q1 2019, TREB reported a healthy rental market in the GTA.
The average one-bedroom rent was up by 7.3% to $2,150, compared to $1,995 in Q1 2018. The average two-bedroom rent was up by 6% to $2,811.
Interesting enough, there was a phenomenal increase of 22.4% in the number of rental units listed at some point during Q1, outstripping the annual growth rate of rental transactions (7.7%).
With a condo vacancy rate hovering around 1% in the GTA, this is a positive sign to the long-term sustainability of the GTA rental market.
Read the complete Q1 2019 TREB Rental Market Report here.
Community Snapshots
Not far apart from each other, the statistics from Leaside and Bridle Path provide us with a glance into the middle-class and luxurious real estate markets in Toronto.
In TREB’s Q1 2019 Community Report, Leaside, as an established middle and upper-middle-class neighbourhood, outperformed the prestigious Bridle Path on the real estate market, with a 44.8% sale-to-new listing ratio, benchmarked against the 28.4% of the latter. On average, it took 20 days to sell a Leaside home, while a Bridle Path property took 35 days.
The result is not surprising considering that the average selling price of a Bridle Path home perched at a formidable $2,598,701, compared to the $1,466,804 average price of a Leaside property.
It is important for home sellers to set realistic expectations for their properties. That being said, there are some less known tricks that could relieve the stress from your home sale. Give us a call at 416-804-5555 to see how we can help.