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Hey everyone! Welcome to this real estate market update by your trusted real estate advisor. I'm Craig Woods, Broker at
Royal LePage Your Community Realty. Well, everyone is talking
about real estate these days. The Toronto
Real Estate Board has released its Market Watch report.
In looking at last year, it shows that the number of sales transactions,
in the Greater Toronto Area, were down 4% from 2011; however, the average price rose
by 7% to just over $497,000 making it almost double what it was 11 years ago. Keep in mind when
we are talking about the Greater Toronto Area on the Toronto Real Estate Board MLS, it includes
Halton Peel York and Durham Regions as well as Dufferin and Simcoe Counties. So we travel
quite a distance from the City of Toronto to arrive at these numbers. To the west, Burlington's
average price was almost $476,000 and to the east Oshawa's was almost $259,000. Now, if we look at
Richmond Hill we find the average price was just over $665,000 and if we look at it again in a year
from now it would not surprise me to see that number decrease and not because prices are
decreasing. The reason is these numbers are for all homes types, detached, semi detached,
townhouses, etc. and apartment condos. There are several apartment style condos being
built in Richmond Hill and they will lower the average price for the area.
To have a better idea of what's happening with your particular home style, it is best
to look it up on Toronto Real Estate Board's Market Watch Report. I have all of these posted on my web site
at craigwoods.ca/marketwatch. Also, on my web site is a little tutorial on how to read
the report. Okay, so now let's take a closer look at
what happened in 2012. In this graph, you can see there was sales growth year over year
until May. Then you see the red line representing 2012 to be less than the sales in 2011 for
the rest of the year. So what happened? Part of this may be a result of all the economic
uncertainty around the world last summer. You may also recall the Government of Canada
imposed stricter mortgage lending guidelines than for government backed insured mortgages.
The maximum amortization was changed to 25 years. In just 2008 the maximum was 35 years
but it was changed to 30 years in 2011. With it changing to 25 years in 2012, it will of
forced potential first time home buyers out of the market for the time being. The government also limited
the availability of the government backed insured mortgages to homes with a value of
less than $1 million dollars which will of also cooled down some of the activity
If you have any real estate related questions,
please do not hesitate to get in touch with me. Also, you may want to subscribe to my YouTube
channel in order to take advantage of seeing my video blogs.
Now you're up to date - Make it a great day!