{"id":9121,"date":"2021-05-07T12:13:06","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T12:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/if-the-gta-housing-market-cooled-in-april-thats-good-news\/"},"modified":"2023-10-24T04:18:21","modified_gmt":"2023-10-24T04:18:21","slug":"if-the-gta-housing-market-cooled-in-april-thats-good-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/news\/if-the-gta-housing-market-cooled-in-april-thats-good-news\/","title":{"rendered":"If the GTA housing market cooled in April, that\u2019s good news"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are signs that the Greater Toronto Area\u2019s housing market is cooling, and if that is indeed the case, it\u2019s the calm before the storm.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to think this will be a trend that continues for the next month or two because it would be my preference to see some stability,\u201d Bradley Watson, a broker with Watson Estates in Toronto, told\u00a0CREW<\/a>. \u201cFor whatever bubble exists in our market, I\u2019d like to see some of the air come out of it because people who took advantage of working from home and fled the city will be returning, and when immigrants come back it\u2019s bound to boost prices in Toronto. So, in the meantime, I\u2019d like to see a rest period for the market.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB<\/a>) showed there were 13,663 sales in the GTA in April, down by 12.7% from a month prior, essentially flattening the selling price during that period, and 36.6% above the 10-year average of 10,000 transactions for the month between 2010 and 2019.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, the number of sales last month was more than four times higher than they were in April 2020, the first full month of COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns.<\/p>\n

New listings declined by 8.4% to 20,825 in April from March, but they were more than three times the number of new listings a year ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes sense that we had a pullback in market activity compared to March,\u201d Lisa Patel, TRREB\u2019s president, said in a statement. \u201cWe\u2019ve experienced a torrid pace of home sales since the summer of 2020 while seeing little in the way of population growth. We may be starting to exhaust the pool of potential buyers within the existing GTA population. Over the long term, sustained growth in sales requires sustained growth in population.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada is supposed to settle 401,000 immigrants this year, however, that appears unlikely because of the ongoing pandemic. Still, in light of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada\u2019s<\/a> plan to welcome\u00a0 through 2023, 60% of whom will belong to the \u201ceconomic class,\u201d which includes skilled workers, investors and entrepreneurs, the GTA\u2019s housing market is sure to catch fire again soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need some breathing room, and I\u2019m hoping this is the breathing room we didn\u2019t get during the winter months because another rollercoaster is coming,\u201d said Watson. \u201cMonths of inventory are still very low; the condo market dropped from five to one month, and freehold is still only one month. This is an extremely heightened seller\u2019s market\u2014in fact we\u2019re deep in a seller\u2019s market, which is why I\u2019d like to see this trend continue for the next couple of months so that we can get our footing again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are signs that the Greater Toronto Area\u2019s housing market is cooling, and if that is indeed the case, it\u2019s the calm before the storm. \u201cI like to think this will be a trend that continues for the next month or two because it would be my preference to see some stability,\u201d Bradley Watson, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":23530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9121"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23529,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9121\/revisions\/23529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}