Based on Moe’s video of February 21, 2024. For this month’s numbers, see GTA Housing Market Today.
این مقاله به فارسیRead in FarsiAs of February 2024, the January 2024 numbers said 2024 had started as an end-user market in Toronto: sales across the board were up 37% from January 2023, buyers were mostly families purchasing for themselves, and the biggest discounts sat on larger homes in the suburbs rather than on condos.
I am Moe Asgarian, a Broker in Toronto, and what follows is the official January 2024 board data read next to what my own buyers and sellers were doing at the time.
Where the Toronto market stood going into 2024
A short look back helps. Condo sales in Toronto peaked in early 2022. Then interest rates climbed and prices drifted down, month after month. In the first five months of 2023, before rates moved up again, condo sales in Toronto staged a strong recovery. Once rates rose, sales fell back and stayed soft until 2023 closed out.
That is the backdrop for the headline figure. According to official TRREB data, the number of transactions in January 2024 was 37% higher than in January 2023. A 37% jump is not something to wave away. It does cover a single month, and later months in 2024 could read differently, but growth like that said the recovery was stronger than the one we saw a year earlier. If the trend held, the first half of 2024 would be a stronger recovery than the first half of 2023. Good news, with one caution: the market was still a long way from its good days, and 2023 was, in my view, one of the slowest Toronto housing markets of the previous decade. The comparison starts from a low base.
Low-rise sales rose faster in the 905 than in the City of Toronto
Split the January 2024 figures by segment. For low-rise homes, meaning detached, semi-detached and townhouses inside the City of Toronto, sales in January 2024 were up 17% against January 2023. In the 905, the ring of municipalities around the city, low-rise sales in January 2024 were up 40% against the same month a year earlier. That is a wide gap, and the interesting part is that the market with the higher average price added the most transactions.
Why larger suburban homes got such deep discounts
The reason was price. Through the slow market of 2023, large houses in those 905 areas listed in the $4 million to $5 million range simply were not selling. Owners had them on the market, the market was flat, and at those prices nothing moved. So by early 2024 sellers had cut hard, bringing houses that had been asking $4 million to $5 million closer to $3 million. Three million dollars is still a high price, but that is a serious discount on the same house, and it is one of the main reasons sales rose against January 2023. A year earlier those houses were either not listed at all, or priced around $4 million to $5 million.
I had buyers living in townhouses who had been counting the days until they could upgrade to a detached home, and in early 2024 the opportunity arrived. My read at the time was that this window was temporary, and that conditions like it would not stay in place for long.
The condo market in Toronto and the suburbs
Condos moved too. Official figures for January 2024 showed condo transactions inside the City of Toronto up 46% from January 2023, and up 31% in the suburbs around the city. Worth remembering: the condo is usually the first product buyers pick up in a market like this one, and the low-rise and high-rise segments are always linked. When low-rise prices climb, buyers turn to condos instead and condo prices recover behind them.
Even with those sales gains, in early 2024 the condo market was a quiet one where prices on the whole were not rising much. That combination of more sales and flat pricing is exactly what made it workable for someone buying a place to live in.
Who was actually buying in early 2024
An end-user market means the buyers are families and people who want the home for their own use, as against investors, who normally buy to rent the property out. In early 2024 the end users were the real buyers in the Toronto condo market. Someone buying to live in could make a very good purchase in a downtown Toronto condo, finding units priced and conditioned sensibly, and with an experienced real estate agent reading it with them they could be confident the purchase was a good one.
That does not mean condos stopped going into multiple offers. They did. But if you genuinely wanted to buy, you could win that multiple-offer situation and still pay a fair price for the condo you were getting. The other group worth naming is the investors who were hunting good deals in the suburbs around Toronto. In early 2024 you really could buy a house at a strong discount. I would not call it easy, but it was far from impossible. The warning I gave then is the one I would give about any window like it: these conditions are not stable, and they can change quickly.
If you want this read applied to your own street, your own property type and your own budget, fill out the form at the bottom of this page or book a free consultation. Stay well and take care.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was January 2024 a buyer's market or a seller's market in Toronto?
In January 2024 it was widely called an end-user market rather than a classic buyer's or seller's market. Sales were up 37% against January 2023, but prices were not running away, and the people buying were mostly families purchasing for their own use rather than investors buying to rent out.
Why did low-rise sales rise more in the 905 than in the City of Toronto in January 2024?
Price cuts. Low-rise sales in the 905 were up 40% in January 2024 against 17% inside the City of Toronto, and the main reason was that large suburban houses that had sat unsold through the slow market of 2023 at $4 million to $5 million were brought closer to $3 million. That discount pulled buyers off the sidelines.
What does an end-user market mean in real estate?
An end user is a buyer who wants the home for their own use, usually a family moving in. The opposite is an investor, who normally buys to rent the property out. When a market is described as an end-user market, it means those owner-occupier buyers, not investors, are setting the pace of sales.