Toronto home sales surge 23.5% to record despite supply crunch

This comes after the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver saw home sales drop by 26 per cent this August compared to previous year.

The largest drop in property sales last month was among detached homes, with a decrease of 44.5 per cent. The Toronto Real Estate Board said in a statement sales got a boost in the month thanks to two extra working days compared with the year-ago period.

Some industry experts have said the tax could steer foreign buyers towards Toronto instead.

Home sales in Toronto jumped to a record in August over the prior year, diverging from Vancouver where a foreign investor tax cooled Canada’s hottest housing market.

With municipal politicians gathering in Victoria to meet with cabinet ministers in late September, Clark suggested they should be prepared to deal with the short supply of urban housing. However, compared with July, the figure was down 0.1 per cent.

“The conditions underlying strong demand for ownership housing (in Toronto) remained in place, including a relatively strong regional economy, growth in average earnings and low borrowing costs”, said Jason Mercer, TREB’s director of market analysis.

The average price for homes sold, regardless of type of property, was $710,410, an increase of 17.7 per cent. “This situation continued to underpin very strong home price growth, irrespective of home type or area”, said Larry Cerqua, president of the board, in a release.

“Unfortunately, we did not see any relief on the listings front, with the number of new listings down compared to a year ago”, TREB President Larry Cerqua said in a statement.

“Population in the GTA continues to grow”.