(Toronto) December residential property sales in the Greater Toronto Area nearly halved from the same month a year earlier as the region ended 2022 with a “marked adjustment” from record highs in 2021, a indicated Thursday the real estate chamber of the metropolis.
Home sales in the last month of the year totaled 3,117 sales, which was a 48.2% drop from December 2021, when the market was moving at a blistering pace and COVID-19 scuttled markets. vacation plans.
The number of sales last month showed a decrease of 31% compared to November 2022 and contributed to the 75,140 sales made in the market for the whole year – a drop of 38.2% from the record of 121,639 transactions of the previous year.
Real Estate Board Chairman Paul Baron blamed the Bank of Canada’s “dynamic” interest rate hikes for the crisis that began in the spring of 2022 – a situation he says has further hampered housing affordability. lodging.
The country’s key interest rate has been raised several times throughout 2022 and now stands at 4.25%, its highest level since January 2008.
The hikes, which tend to boost mortgage rates, have weighed on purchasing power and forced many people to reconsider their housing decisions.
New listings for sale last month were 4,074, down 21.3% from 5,177 new listings in December 2021.
Would-be buyers remained on the sidelines of the market for much of the second half of 2022, awaiting further price cuts, while sellers delayed putting properties up for sale unless they were forced to move , hoping that this delay would allow them to sell at prices as high as those obtained by their predecessors the previous year.
The average selling price of properties for the past month was $1,051,216, down 9.2% from December 2021, which was $1,157,837, the real estate board said. The December composite benchmark was down 8.9% year over year.
Yet the year still ended with an average sale price of $1,189,850, up 8.6% from the $1,095,333 recorded in 2021.