Toronto was one of the large cities in Canada that has been greatly affected by the pandemic. Unprecedented business closures, bankruptcy, job loss and constant fears has been an obstacle in the city’s property market. Now that they have slowly eased the lockdown measures, how’s the property market doing so far?
The beginning of 2020 has introduced a lot of property opportunities in the city to level up the urbanization. However, the pandemic put on a halt to the market starting March until May. Buyers and especially sellers are struggling to keep up its losses for the last stretch of the first quarter until the second quarter.
More challenges are being put on the weight especially with housing prices constant increase since 2019. According to RE/MAX, it was only predicted that there would only be a 2% increase of the housing prices. However, the beginning of the year surged the prices of up to 6%.
Since the COVID hit the country, prices mellowed down between 3-4% of house pricing increase. In the next coming months, CMHC declared that there can be a major fall of house prices of up to 9-18%. No wonder after the lockdown has been eased, buyers and sellers are constantly on the lookout on new investments all over Toronto.
It’s important to note that these changes in house prices are affected by so many factors.
- More residents and even immigrants are moving into the city, hence a rise of population growth. The more residents, the more properties the country needs to develop to meet the demand.
- Agencies increase the housing price rate every year. As the years go by, the higher the increase that the property market incurs.
- Financing rates may have decreased or increased depending on the economy’s financial ratings.
- Then there’s the property taxes and transaction taxes that can add with maintaining a property to own.
A pricing data presented by Mortgage Sandbox, has shown a major decrease in property rates. For example, the condo pricing rates went up beginning of this year for almost $1,000,000 and has achieved a significant decrease of $940,000. Interestingly. Toronto has ranked top 9 in terms of property market pricing.
It must be the right time to invest in properties in Toronto now that the lockdown has been paused. Housing platforms like Condo Mapper have continuously listed new properties for sale over the last 3 months. The month of July has reported an increase of buyers since the lockdown has lifted.
- 59% of 2 bedroomhomes were sold
- 23% of 2 bedroom townhouses were sold
- 8% of condominiums were sold
The city has also forecasted that house prices might continue to go down until 2021. Although not all properties will follow the trend, there’s still a fair amount of properties that are offering affordable rates to its citizens. It all now depends on how the economy looks like once COVID cases start slowing down in the next coming months.