Toronto’s once-booming condominium market sagged last month, leading a drop in real estate action compared with a year ago, the Toronto Real Estate Board said on Friday.
Monthly numbers released by TREB outlined a 1.5 per cent slip in home sales in July compared to the same month in 2011.
The board said there were 7,570 homes sold in the Greater Toronto Area, compared with 7,683 a year ago. The numbers showed a larger decline in the condominium market, with just 1,753 sold across the Toronto area – a 10 per cent drop from the previous July.
Board president Ann Hannah said newly introduced lending rules and the land transfer tax levied against Toronto real estate sales played a role in the dip.
“New mortgage lending guidelines and the additional upfront cost of the City of Toronto land transfer tax also prompted some households to put their buying decision on hold,” Hannah said in a statement.
While sales were down last months, prices did not seem to be drastically affected. The average prices for selling a home in July was $476,947 – a four per cent jump from 2011.
The sale of condominiums in the GTA fell one per cent to $328,216 over the same period.
The TREB report comes on the heels of another report suggesting the Toronto condo market is on the wane.
A report released on Thursday by Urbanation, which tracks the local high-rise market, said unsold condo units reached a high of 18,123 by the end of June.
The sale of new units was also at their lowest point since the same time in 2010, down about 20 per cent from the first quarter of 2012.
New unit sales were actually down 50 per cent from last year, but Urbanation’s Pauline Lierman said 2011 was a record year for the condo market, “not likely one that’s going to be broken for a very long time.”
The report also said sales over the first six months of 2012 were at the second highest on record.
With files from CTVNews.ca's Fanen Chiahemen
