Market Update: April 2020
Market Update – April 2020
April was our first full month under the new social distancing and stay home orders here in the GTA and it has affected everyone and every industry. How did the numbers look for real estate this past month? You may be surprised.
If you have been following the news, you probably heard that the real estate market is down around 70%. But, what exactly is the media referring to when they quote that alarming stat?
In the month of April, overall sales were just under 3,000, where we had just over 9,000 a year ago. Is this just because buyers are being cautious and are staying home or is there another reason?
The part of the equation that the media did not emphasize was that listings were also down almost the same percentage as sales. We had 6,174 new listings in April compared to 17,198 in April last year = a 64.1% dip. This is understandable as many people are taking precautions and are holding off listing their homes until there is a safer time to sell. But ultimately, less listings = less sales.
How did the lack of units sold actually affect prices? To be honest, isn’t that what most people are really interested in?
The overall average price for April 2020 in the GTA was $821,392 compared to $820,373 in April 2019. We actually had a 0.1% increase this year. I bet most people did not expect to have increases during a pandemic, but that is exactly what happened.
Although we did have a slight increase in price, not every home type had increases in average prices.
The condo segment had an average price of $578,283, down 1.7% when compared to April last year.
The average sales price for a detached home for April was $983,630, down 3.5% from last year.
Town house’s average price came in at just over $681,000 which was a 3.8% increase.
The biggest increase in average sales price was the semi-detached segment with an average sales price of $865,971, up 7% when compared to April of last year.
I hope this market update has given you some hope that it is not all doom and gloom out there. Yes, we are still being cautious and taking our clients’ safety into consideration. It is not business as usual yet, but there is light at the end of the tunnel!
