Signs of Life? February Condo Market Stats Have a Pulse

It’s that time of the month again, TREB just released their stats for February. The numbers aren’t as painful to look at as in the previous few months, but does this mean we are on the way to recovery?

• In C01 (downtown west), condo sales are down 31%, average prices are down 8.5%, and inventory is up 46%. The number of sales as a percentage of active listings was 19% versus 40% last year.
• In C08 (downtown east), condo sales are down 9%, average prices are down 13%, and inventory is up a 85%. The number of sales as a percentage of active listings was 29% versus 59% last year.

Everything is still down over last year, but the drop is not nearly as extreme as it has been over the past few months. The trend has been double the inventory and half the sales, with average prices down 10-12%. So what exactly is going on here?

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• Total inventory is actually down slightly in both C01 and C08 compared to January (last month). Normally we would expect inventory to increase as the weather warms and the spring market approaches.
• How about C08? Sales are down only 9% over last year (compared to 32% and 45% over the last two months respectively), and median prices are down only 7% (compared to 9% and 8% last 2 months).ÂÂÂ
• Compared to 2007 numbers (2 years ago), average and median prices in both CO1 and C08 are still up significantly

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So what is up? Is the market showing strength and signs of recovery? Maybe. My feeling is the appearance of postive change is mostly attributable to the fact that February 2008 was the first month where we started to see a dip in the market overall. Sales began to slow and inventory started to climb. February 2008 was also the first month that the Toronto Land Transfer Tax kicked in as well.  In short, we will have to wait to see a few months worth of data before we can say the market is trending up.

Download a PDF file with all the stats for February.

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