January GTA new home market continues recent trends

The Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) says sales of new single-family homes in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) hit their lowest level for the month of January since before 2000.

“New condominium apartment sales in January were in line with typical levels for this time of year,” said Patricia Arsenault, Altus Group research consulting services executive vice-president. “New condos remain an attractive option for end-user buyers looking for more affordable homes, as well as for investors who are ensuring needed new rental supply continues to flow into a tight rental market.”

The Altus Group is BILD’s official source of new home market intelligence.

In January, the benchmark price for available new single-family homes was $1,229,454, which was 19.6 per cent above figures for the same month in 2017. The benchmark price for condominium apartments was $714,430, which was 40.8 per cent above last January.

The new home market saw a very slight increase in supply in January, to 11,750 units, from 11,397 units in December. That is still well below what is considered a healthy level. Supply of new housing is typically measured by the number of new homes available for purchase in builders’ inventories at the end of the month and includes units in pre-construction, under construction and completed projects. A healthy new home market should have nine to 12 months’ worth of inventory and, right now, inventory is at about three to four months, based on the pace of sales in the past 12 months.

“The GTA is expected to grow to 9.7 million people by 2041,” Wilkes said. “How are we going to house them? All levels of government and the building industry have a role to play in increasing housing supply and we need to work together to simplify approval processes, update zoning by-laws and service developable land so we can bring more homes to market.”