For every season… there’s a market report. Summer is over: when it comes to real estate we are squarely in the Fall Market. It’s here. It’s busy. And before we get swept up like the leaves in all the activity we will pause to recap just what the summer looked like in the world of Toronto Real Estate!

You might have seen in the news one of two things for Toronto/the 416: either sales are down or prices are up. Before you think it’s all spin, both these statements are true. There were fewer sales, but the average price, on a whole, was up. The trend of fewer sales and higher average prices applied to freehold houses, but not to condos so let’s pull those out and take a look:

Condo sales in June/July/August were down 17.7% when compared to the same period in 2011. The prices slipped gradually down, too, starting at up 2% in June, to down 1% in July and August saw a decrease in the average sale price of 4%. That average sat at $349,489 when the month was through.

What’s the take home here? Well, for one we think that people do listen to the news and we heard many times that buyers and sellers were nervous about the condo market. This, plus a bunch of new units hitting the market, plus changes to borrowing criteria and it looks like this was inevitable. The numbers don’t lie, the market is down for condos, but (there’s always a but, right?) we think that a lot of this is building/location specific. Some buildings are hit harder than others. Location, location, location plays more into the sale process of condos now. People are buying condos, just the choice of which condo is becoming more location specific.

For Freehold Houses, August saw the most dramatic statistical shift. Let’s look at the Detached House, the biggest share of freehold sales:

In August there were 709 Detached Houses sold in the 416 area code, which is down 19% from last year, but the average price shot up a whooping 15% over August 2011. Average Detached Home sale price in August was $746,300. The story is similar for semis, too. There were fewer new listings, keeping the stock of available homes down. We saw some real… um…. pieces of work this summer when we were out doing showings. It was easy to tell which would go quickly and which might still be on the market in the Fall.

That’s where things were. Now, gazing into our crystal ball, the Fall Market will be… wait… our crystal ball is in the shop… How about what we know instead:

The market has picked up for Fall. It was expected and that’s certainly coming true. People are back in the swing of things, and by looking at our data it’s easy to see that showings on our listings have picked up significantly. We are also seeing more stock on the market, more options for buyers and more sellers selling good product. Stuff people have been waiting for after seeing the slim picking over the summer. It’s good, it’s busy, and it’s got that fresh Autumn feel about it.

We’ll let you know what it all shakes down to in December as we get ready for the Winter market. In the mean time, if you want to know what things looked like in your area this Summer or what trends we are seeing now for your specific home criteria send us a note and we’ll crunch the numbers for you.

Happy Fall, everyone.