Corinne McCabe , Broker

It’s mid July and the first smell of a calmer real estate market is in the air. The kids are happily ensconced in camp, the roads are less congested, the Blue Jays are closing in on first place and you've got your new favourite book packed and ready to take to the cottage. This is what life in the big city is supposed to look like! Sure it's hot, but we are Torontonians. We can brush off the heat alerts faster than The Four Tenors can brush off a member of their troop.

The freehold sector has finally loosened up some of its grip on listings as last week there was a 27% increase of homes to choose from. Sales remained strong with 156 sales in the 416 and only 64.7% sold at or above asking. The hot spot for the week was the east core where there were 10 more sales than listings which boosted multiple offers to well over 75%. Sup-ply and demand dynamics remain firmly in place in Toronto. As a comparison, last year, for the same period, there were 34% more listings and 9% fewer sales (with a dreamy level of only 54% of homes selling at or above the list price).

The condo market continues to show its fortitude. Last week it recorded 592 new listings across the 416 compared to a staggering 750 at the same time last year. While listings are down, sales are up over 33% to 295 but what is really astonishing is the number of condos selling at or over the list price. Last year that number was 18.5% compared to 33.6% last week. Sales above the list price has not dipped below 30% since mid February of 2016.

Bosley Real Estate Ltd. is a full service boutique brokerage operating in Toronto, Niagara-on-the-Lake and Jordan, Ontario since 1928. We have four centrally located offices and over 250 sales representatives selling and leasing homes and condominiums in all the vibrant communities we work in. Our brand is well recognized internationally thanks to our unique affiliation with Leading Real Estate Companies of the World. Our sales teams meet weekly to discuss market conditions, trending topics, and anecdotes that more accurately report on the true temperature of the real estate market.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve hit the half way point of 2016 already. It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating the start of the spring market. Ah, those were heady times, buyers sat patietly waiting for the impending influx of new listings to satisfy a hungry desire for a place to call home. Well, months later, many of those same buyers are still waiting. New listings barely trickled to the market causing more multiple offers than ever before, not just on houses but condos as well.

It’s not unusual for listings to taper off before long weekends. The last thing anyone wants to do is hang around the city when all their friends are at the cottage. That explains the 46% decline in new listings last week. On the other hand, if you are determined to buy there is a slight chance that your buyer competition is also sitting by the dock somewhere. Clearly that was the thinking last week as sales only backed off by a marginal 17% and we still recorded 70% of homes trading at or above the list price.

Condo market buyers and sellers expressed a similar sentiment. Listings backed off by 25.5% while sales slipped by 19%. The condo market is still filling in the gaps left by the housing market as 35.5% of all condos sold happened at or above the list price. For a better understanding of how the market has performed consider that two years ago a mere 12% of condos sold in multiple offers.