Corinne McCabe , Broker

Ah September. Just as we predicted, and the fall real estate market is off! The floodgates are open and new listings are finally coming to market. The question again is do you list low and create a bidding war or list at where you think it will sell? If you ask the agents you will get mixed reviews. But if you look at the statistics the way to go is to list low. A property in the west end that was listed for $899,000 sold in 2 days. They had over 80 booked showings and generated 4 bully offers and sold for $1,410,000! Was it priced too low? We say yes. So now that

house has set a precedent for pricing. It is encouraging to see a continued resurgence in the demand for ownership housing.

New listings in the freehold sector were up last week 15% from the week before, but the sold listings were up by an astonishing 127%. These were all the properties that had come on the market right after Labour Day. Supply and demand economics propelled 59% of sales sold at or above the list price. Not surprising, homes priced in the $700K to $1.SM range were in demand the most with 46 out of 69 homes selling over the asking price.

The condominium market performed similarly to the freehold market last week with only a 3% increase in new listings, to 275 units throughout the core. Sales improved by 73% from the previous week, and the activity continues to be strong with 55% of condos selling at or above the list price, and the majority of those sold were under $700,000.

No question this has been a hot, hot summer and some long periods of drought. The Toronto real estate market is also suffering through a long period of listing drought. "The annual rate of sales growth out-paced the annual rate of new listings. We only have slightly more than two-and-a-half months of inventory in the TREB market as a whole, and less than two months of inventory in the City of Toronto. This means that despite the fact the sales remain off the record highs from 2016 and 2017, many GTA neighbourhoods continue to suffer from lack of inventory. This could present a problem if demand continues to accelerate over the next year, which is expected. Jason Mercer- Director of market analysis TREB.

The good news out today from TREB were the monthly resale housing figures for August. In the GTA there were 6,839 sales reported in August- an 8.5% increase compared to August 2017. The average sale price for the City of Toronto was $785,223 - up by 8.4% from August 2017. Sales of detached homes in particular, continued to show signs of improvement after a week start to the year with a 12.3% jump in sales in the City of Toronto, to an average price of $1.244,275. The tight market conditions contributed to a strong August. The gains are a sign that buyers who were waiting on the sidelines have renewed their search for buying a home.

The condominium market which has been the region's strongest sector over the past months also rose 6.4% to an average price of $585,355 for the City of Toronto, but sales were down by 5.6%. After three months of continued growth the Toronto real estate market is signalling that that it's coming back to life after a weak first half of the year.