Photo: Robert B. Moffatt/Flickr

Greater Toronto Area home sales and prices continued to slide in August, signalling the market’s months-long adjustment to the province’s Fair Housing Plan and its foreign-homebuyer tax in particular.

According to the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB), the number of homes changing hands across the GTA last month was down 34.8 per cent from the same time a year ago.

Meantime, the average price of a home was $732,292, up 3 per cent from August 2016 but down from July’s mean of $746,218.

“Recent reports suggest that economic conditions remain strong in the GTA,” writes TREB President Tim Syrianos, in a statement.

“Positive economic news coupled with the slower pace of price growth we are now experiencing could prompt an improvement in demand for ownership housing, over and above the regular seasonal bump, as we move through the fall,” he continues.

While the scenario Syrianos outlines remains to be seen, here are 10 facts that show how the GTA’s housing market is working through a correction.

1. The average price of a detached home was $968,494, almost unchanged from a year ago.

2. Eight GTA municipalities have seen detached home prices collapse by more than 20 per cent since April, according to Zoocasa’s analysis of TREB data.

3. Among them, the leader for declines was Whitchurch-Stouffville, where prices declined 26 per cent.

4. Halton Hills and Scugog were the only municipalities where detached home prices increased (by 11 per cent and 6 per cent, respectively), says Zoocasa.

5. The GTA’s condo market continued to show resilience: the average price of a unit was $507,841, up 20 per cent annually.

6. Condo prices were also up from the previous month’s average of $501,750.

7. On average, GTA homes stayed on the market for 25 days as of August, up from 18 during the same month the year before, or an increase of 38.9 per cent.

8. Meantime, the number of active listings surged by 65 per cent annually to a total of 16,419.

9. But although sales are down more than 30 per cent annually, the August year-over-year decline is “the smallest in three months,” notes RBC.

10. And the 6,357 GTA homes that sold last month represent an increase over July’s total of 5,921.

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