16 May 2018

However, it’s still quite a difficult year for Toronto’s realtors, as the federal government tightened mortgage qualification rules on January 1 in order to restrain the previous year’s prices growth. In addition to it, there’s a new foreign buyers tax and other measures aimed at reducing the demand.

Moreover, Toronto’s housing market is also dealing with a large number of unsold active listings, which appeared as the result of 2017 prices increase, when many owners rushed to list their properties. Although the sales-to-new-listings ratio is stabilized, it’s still at the lower end of the range.

In 2017, the average ratio was 0.46% – it’s the lowest number since the recession and the lower-end of a balanced market. Nevertheless, it didn’t get worse.

In 2018, so far, home sales fell by a third compared to the start of 2017. New listings went down by 4.7% from a year ago.

“It could mean that sellers are just waiting for the market to reach the bottom,” – noted Rishi Sondhi, an economist with Toronto-Dominion Bank. “They’re waiting as they believe the market will rebound.”