Toronto market can change on a dime… Perhaps we are seeing start of a shift.

In the fall, listings sat on the market with no showings. One was lucky to get an offer. Market was tough. Towards the end of the year and the beginning of 2024 – houses that had been sitting, slowly started selling. Early January, in houses started gating a lot more showings. In many cases, buyers “woke up” and started buying. It appears that to some extent confidence in the real estate market is being restored. In hot areas where there has been little product there is pent up demand – in some cases multiple offers are back. We had a listing in a central area that ended up with 8 offers within 4 days of being listed and sold well over list.

It is not certain how this trend will continue. The high end now has a luxury tax – how this tax will influence the market is still to be seen. It is hard to say how condos will fare.

Premium prices for high end turn key homes on premium lots in premium locations. There are not too many homes in the city that have it all and it appears that the ones that do are getting record prices. Last week a home in Baby Point was listed for $8.5 mill and in 3 days attracted 3 bids selling for $9.6 mill. It had a fabulous ravine lot with a large tableland. The house was beautiful and the landscaping was spectacular. This is for sure a record price for the area and shows that if you do it right buyers appreciate it. The cost of building and renovating is so high now and takes so much time that turn key is worth paying up for in some buyers eyes.

Nothing new to report in real estate. The last few weeks have been eerily quiet. We are heading towards mid January and there is not much activity on the streets of the city. It looks like everyone is waiting for Omicron to blow over. It can’t be soon enough. In our world buyers are waiting to buy. We hope that sellers are willing to sell. With houses increasing in price we are looking at possible increases in condo sales and prices. Condos have not kept up with houses.

Its election day and this year the election results will be vey interesting. Our real estate market and our economy has been influenced so much by the pandemic and in many ways our election results are influenced by pandemic policies. To date this fall we have not seen our usual increase in listings and particularly after a dry summer buyers are not getting the inventory they have been waiting for. Hence we are seeing some intense bidding on certain homes. It’s not that easy to buy anything now. You have to be very prepared and a good agent is a big help.

Offer dates come and go with no offers. There are a number of homes in the city who expected multiple offers and didn’t get any on offer day. This started a few weeks ago and has continued through spring and into the summer. A couple of weeks ago we listed a house with an offer date and didn’t get any. The seller then raised the price to reflect more of what they wanted and then ended up with multiple offers, selling for list price. It will probably be simpler and less stressful for everyone involved when we go back to a more balanced market with list prices reflecting more of what market value is. The problem is that we weren’t sure what market value actually was. Prices were all over the place. As supply and demand balance out – hopefully that will become clearer.