GTA MONTHLY HOUSING REPORT

Based on data released for April 2020 from the Toronto Real Estate Board

GTA Housing Market Remained in Balance during April

Summary Points

• April was the first full calendar month following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, reporting total housing sales in the GTA that were three times lower than a year ago at 2,975 transactions. The 67% year-over-year plunge in sales was the steepest annual decline recorded over the last 23 years of available data back to 1997, resulting from physical distancing safety protocols introduced and a sudden economic shock caused by mass business closures. The health crisis-induced slowdown beginning during the second half of March followed a strong start to the year, with sales in January and February up 32% from 2019.
• New listings fell in lockstep with sales, declining 64% year-over-year. This helped keep active listings low as the market transitioned through an unprecedented period, with available supply at month-end down 41% from a year ago to 10,561 units — the lowest level of April active listings in more than 23 years. Nonetheless, the market became more balanced last month as the sales-to-new listings ratio declined to 48%, down from 52% in April 2019 but on par with April 2018. Active listings equalled 3.5 months of inventory, which was still considered balanced and well below the peak of 8.5 months reached during the previous recession in late 2018/early 2019.
• As demand and supply were fairly equally matched in April, homes sold in an average of 19 days, which was unchanged from a year ago. However, the average sale price-to-list price ratio came down from 102.8% in March to 98.4% in April, which was also down from last April (99.4%). With sale prices negotiated lower in more instances, average prices in April came down by 9% from March to $821,392, which was back to the April 2019 level ($820,373). However, a lot of the decline was attributable to a compositional shift in activity from higher-priced to lower-priced homes, which is typically the case during the initial stages of a market slowdown. Median prices, which limit some of the compositional effect, were down 6.7% month-over-month but up 3.2% year-over-year.