York Region sees massive spike in new high-rise condo unit sales

YorkRegion.com
July 25, 2017
Adam Martin-Robbins

York Region saw a huge surge in sales of new high-rise condominium units last month, while sales of new low-rise, single-family homes declined sharply, according to new numbers released by Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD).

Across the region, buyers snapped up a whopping 2,266 new high-rise condo units in June. That’s up more than 900 per cent from 222 in the same month last year and from 228 in June 2015.

Meanwhile, sales of new low-rise, single family homes — townhouses, semi-detached and detached — declined by 53 per cent to 248 in June of this year, down from 532 in June 2016.

The drop is even sharper compared with June 2015, when 1,070 new low-rise, single-family homes were sold.

A similar trend is playing out elsewhere in the GTA.

In Toronto, for example, new high-rise condo unit sales jumped by 34 per cent to 2,610 in June 2017, up from 1,946 a year earlier.

Meanwhile, there were no new low-rise home sales recorded, compared with 78 in June 2016.

In neighbouring Peel Region — which includes Brampton, Mississauga and Caledon — sales of new high-rise condo units climbed by nearly 12 per cent to 523 in June 2017, up from 468 last year.

Over the same period, sales of new low-rise homes plummeted by more than 70 per cent to 130 from 443.       

Across the GTA, new condo sales surpassed the previous record set in March 2017, with 5,495 units sold last month.

That’s up 89 per cent from a year ago and far exceeds the 10-year average of 2,550 units sold, according to BILD.

Conversely, just 551 new single-family, low-rise homes were sold in June, which marks a 72 per cent drop from last year and 64 per cent off the 10-year average.

“The record number of condominium apartment sales in June was the result of a perfect storm of factors”, said Patricia Arsenault, executive vice-president of Altus Group’s research consulting service, which provided the data to BILD.

“These factors include: the sizeable number of units in new condo projects opened in May and June (more than 8,500); demand from end-user buyers who might have preferred a single-family home but have adjusted their expectations due to lack of affordable supply; and heightened investor interest due to the rapid price increases for condo apartments in recent months.”

About 91 per cent of the 6,046 new homes sold in the GTA last month were multi-family condo apartments in high-rise and mid-rise buildings and stacked townhomes, while only nine percent were low-rise, single-family homes, according to BILD.

The average price of available new condo apartments rose to $627,000, in June up from $604,683 in May and up by about 34 per cent from June 2016.