While much of the GTA housing market has seen a significant cooling in the first two months of 2018, there is one prominent exception — new construction condos.
The price of a new GTA condo jumped a whopping 39.5 per cent year-over-year last month, according to data from Altus Group, released today by the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD).
“Tight supply continues to drive pricing levels,” writes BILD president and CEO David Wilkes, in a statement. “This is especially true when it comes to the pricing of single family homes.”
GTA new construction single-family home prices were up 12.8 per cent year-over-year in February.
For a closer look at what is causing these red-hot prices, BuzzBuzzNews has listed 7 stats from the release that put things in perspective:
1. Sales of new homes in the GTA were up month-over-month in February, with 2,159 new homes sold. That number is still down considerably from 2017’s record 5,243 sales.
2. Sales of new single-family homes were down a whopping 82 per cent year-over-year, falling from 1,464 sales in 2017 to just 264 last month. That’s 79 per cent below the 10-year average.
3. Meanwhile, sales of new condos were down 50 per cent year-over-year, but were still 17 per cent above the 10-year average with 1,895 units sold.
4. While there was a modest uptick in supply in February to 12,896 units, supply still sits well below what is considered a healthy level.
5. Supply of new housing is typically measured by the number of new homes available for purchase at the end of the month. A healthy market should have 12 month’s worth of inventory — right now that number sits at about 4 months.
6.“While single-family new home inventory is up from last year, it is still quite low in historical terms,” writes Altus Group executive VP of research consulting services Patricia Arsenault. “Moreover, there is a dearth of new single-family product that is affordable to a broader range of buyers — fewer than one in five single-family homes available to purchase at the end of February were priced below $750,000.”
7. The benchmark price for new single-family homes dropped slightly month-over-month to $1,229,454 in February, but was still up 12.8 per cent year-over-year.
