As anyone with an eye on the Greater Toronto Area’s (GTA) housing market will know, the past year has been uncharacteristically subdued and largely characterized by trigger-shy buyers. This is reinforced in the latest report from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB), which was released Tuesday and calls 2024 a “transitionary year” for the market.
According to TRREB, just 67,610 sales were recorded over the entirety of 2024, marking a mere 2.6% rise over 2023.
TRREB Chief Market Analyst Jason Mercer explained in a press release that “market conditions varied by market segment” and that single-family home sales increased in 2024, while condo apartment sales slipped. “Many would-be first-time buyers remained on the sidelines, anticipating more interest rate relief in 2025,” he added. “The lack of first-time buyers impacted the less-expensive condo segment more so than the single-family segments.”
Like total sales, the average selling price for all home types saw little change between 2023 and 2024, increasing by less than 1% to $1,117,600. “Market conditions were tighter for ground-oriented housing and selling prices held up better in these segments as a result,” TRREB said. “Price declines were more notable for condo apartments.”
Conversely, new listings jumped up by 16.4% to 166,121 last year, and the discrepancy between slow sales and a boost in listings “provided buyers with considerable choice in the marketplace,” which also helped to put a lid on price growth.
While TRREB President Elechia Barry-Sproule acknowledged that high borrowing costs brought on by high interest rates put a damper on the GTA’s housing market in 2024, she also pointed out that the market benefitted from long-awaited rate cuts in the latter half of the year. To her point, the BoC has lowered the policy rate five times since June, including by 50 basis points in both October and December. We will ring in 2025 with a policy rate of 3.25%, which is the lowest it’s been in over two years, and economists seem to widely agree that there will be more cuts in 2025, with a 25-bps cut likely to come later this month.
“All else being equal, further rate cuts in 2025 and home prices remaining below their historic peaks should result in improved market conditions over the next 12 months,” Barry-Sproule also said.
Looking at just December 2024, Tuesday's report shows that home sales ended the month down 1.8% year over year, with just 3,359 properties changing hands. (In stark contrast, October and November saw home sales surge 44% and 40% over the same months in 2023.) Most of December’s transactions were concentrated in the detached segment, with 1,423 sales recorded (down 5.8% from last year), compared to 960 condo apartment sales (up 2.3%), 653 townhome sales (up 5.8%), and only 292 sales of semi-detached homes (down 9.3%).
Meanwhile, the average selling price across all housing types came down 1.6% year over year to $1,067,186. Prices slipped slightly for detached homes (down 1.4% to $1,399,209) and townhouses (down 0.3% to $910,761), and were barely changed for condo apartments (down 0.1% to $681,855). On the contrary, the average selling price for semi-detached properties ended December up 6% year over year to $1,088,543.
New and active listings surged in the month by around 20% (to 4,681) and 48% (15,393), year over year, “continuing the trend of a well-supplied market,” according to TRREB.