GTA housing supply crisis continues to shatter market records

YorkRegion.com
May 2, 2017
Bryan Tuckey, president and CEO of Building Industry and Land Development Association

In March, the GTA’s housing supply challenges resulted in record smashing prices, continued unprecedented inventory scarcity and a never seen before level of new condo apartments sales, the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) announced this week.

The number of new homes available to buyers continued to drop to unprecedented levels of scarcity. Across the entire GTA, there were only 10,153 homes available to buyers in builder inventories, according to Altus Group, BILD’s official source for new-home market intelligence.

The available builder inventory has dropped by half in just one year. In March 2016, there were 21,006 homes available to buyers.

“The ongoing decline in new housing inventory is a direct reflection of how difficult it is for the industry to bring product to the market,” BILD president and CEO Bryan Tuckey said. “The hurdles builders face keep getting higher.”

The available supply of new single-family low-rise homes, which includes detached, semi-detached and townhomes, has taken a nosedive since 2007. There were only 932 new low-rise homes available to buyers in builder inventories at the end of March, whereas a decade ago there were 17,854 available.

The scarcity is especially pronounced in the number of single-family detached homes, which has seen supply drop by 98 per cent in a decade. Last month, there were 233 detached homes available for purchase compared to 11,802 in March 2007.

The average price for available new low-rise homes was $1,124,600 in March up more than $40,000 from February and an increase of 32.4 per cent from a year ago. The price for available new detached homes hit $1,783,417 in March, an increase of $716,711 in just one year.

Prices of available condo apartments in high-rise and mid-rise buildings and stacked townhomes were up 14 per cent from a year ago. The average price of units in March was $532,792, with the average price per square foot at $666, and the average unit size 800 square feet.

Last month was the biggest month for sales of new condo apartments in the GTA, with 4,500 units sold. Until last month, May 2016 held the record for the most condo apartments sales with 3,820 suites sold.