Toronto home sales hit record high, prices climb in April

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Toronto area home sales hit a record high for April last month, driving up prices across the region.

There were 11,303 resale homes sold across the Greater Toronto region in April, 17 per cent higher than the number of homes sold a year ago. Average prices jumped 10 per cent compared to last April, to $635,932, driven by a surge in sales of expensive high-end properties.

In the city, the average resale price of a detached house reached $1,056,114, a 9.4 per cent increase. Detached home prices rose more than 13 per cent in the suburbs, hitting an average of $729,961.

Prices were up among all types of homes. Prices of resale semi-detached properties surged nearly 15 per cent to an average of $574,605 across the region. Townhouses jumped more than 20 per cent, to $474,143.

Resale condo prices rose 5.8 per cent in Toronto to $407,612 and jumped 7.4. per cent in the suburbs to $318,471. Among newly built condos, prices rose 2 per cent in the first quarter of the year compared to last year.

The jump in condo prices came as sales slowed in the first quarter of the year, said condo market research firm Urbanation. There were 4,432 new condos sold across the GTA in the first three months of the year, down 10 per cent from the same time last year. That was driven by a 22 per cent drop in new condos on the market.

Most of the slowdown was felt in the City of Toronto, where the supply of new condos fell 58 per cent. The sharp drop comes after a wave of more than 21,000 newly built condos hit the market last year.

The number of unsold condo units under development fell 10 per cent from a year ago, Urbanation said, to 17,488. Just five new projects hit the market in the first quarter of the year. The slower pace of development drove down levels of unsold inventory by 20 per cent.

"Underlying market conditions for new and resale condos have tightened considerably, which should quell concerns of over-building," wrote Urbanation senior vice-president Shaun Hildebrand.

There were a record number of condos rented in the first quarter of the year, but the number of new units listed for rent grew twice as fast. Condo rents rose just 1 per cent to an average of $2.37 per square foot, or roughly $1,790 a month for an average condo.