Ontario’s Fair Housing Plan didn’t stop price growth in the detached segments in more than a third of the local markets in the Greater Toronto Area, a RE/MAX report published this morning suggests.
Compared to the first quarter performance, detached home prices were up in 34 per cent of the 416 — or Toronto proper — “neighbourhoods” and 46.7 per cent of their neighbouring 905 locales, according to RE/MAX.
RE/MAX looked at 65 GTA neighbourhoods, based on Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) districts, and found 40 per cent experienced stronger price growth last quarter than in the previous one across the detached, or single-family, home market.
The increase this quarter is a development that Christopher Alexander, a RE/MAX spokesperson, calls “remarkable” as it comes on the heels of an all-time high for home sales.
Nevertheless, Alexander does note that impacts were felt from government policy measures announced in April — including a foreign-buyer tax for southern Ontario’s Greater Golden Horseshoe.
“Homebuying activity in the GTA has been a tale of two markets — a tight, record-breaking first quarter and a sofer second quarter, characterized by easing sales and overall average price — a result of the introduction of the provincial government’s Fair Housing Plan,” RE/MAX INTEGRA’s regional director for the Ontario-Atlantic Region explains in a statement.
In this more subdued home sales environment in the second quarter, a lone local market posted double-digit, quarter-over-quarter price growth.
Brock, a suburban township north of Toronto, posted an average detached home price of $562,711, representing a quarter-over-quarter increase of 11.7 per cent, according to RE/MAX’s heat map for the 905.
“Statistics show that affordability played a significant role in price growth, with half of TREB districts in the 905 reporting an upswing in the average price of a detached home in the second quarter,” Alexander observes.
For a number of recent quarters, homebuyers who have been priced out of Toronto market have been searching outside the city’s borders for more affordable low-rise housing.
The rural municipality of Caledon’s price growth appears to reflect this trend. It trailed suburban Brock as single-family home prices climbed 8.6 per cent quarterly to an average of $1,127,414 in Q2.
And detached prices in Halton Hills, also a 905 market and located on the northwestern edge of the GTA, reached $841,155 in Q2, up 7.7 from the preceding quarter.
A pair of TREB “neighbourhoods” in the 416 made it into the top five in terms of quarterly price growth as well.
In the second quarter, the average detached home price in the east-end district of Riverdale, Greenwood-Coxwell, Blake-Jones (E01 on the above heat map) was $1,298,439, rising 7.5 per cent over the previous three-month period.
In the city’s west, Dovercourt-Wallace Emerson-Junction, Junction Area, High Park North, Runnymede-Bloor West Village and Lambton-Baby Point (W02 on the map) prices climbed an average of 6.9 per cent to $1,390,342.
RE/MAX expects a sales lull in the summer but “renewed strength” in the remaining months of the year.
“As stability returns to the market, strong underlying economic fundamentals in the Greater Toronto Area and the province of Ontario are predicted to bolster activity, particularly in Q4,” says Alexander. “The resilience in housing values may help to explain why homes sell faster here than in any other Canadian centre,” he notes.
