Excuse us if we seem a little distracted this month but we normally reserve our March Madness for that basketball tournament going on south of the border. Cinderella stories are all the rage when talking college basketball, but here in the Toronto market she can make it to the big event but never seems to catch the prince. Seeing your team get knocked out of the tournament can be maddening but at least you know that if they work hard and persevere they will be back next year. With competition in purchasing as strong as it has been all year, the real estate market is producing more losers than winners. And unlike the basketball teams heading home and thinking of next year, we worry Buyers will begin to take their ball home and call it quits.

With last week being the public school March Break we were not surprised to see both listings and sales in the freehold market down from the previous week. With all the families away for a well-deserved break it is common to see the market take a brief pause.  What didn’t take a pause was the bidding wars, with 75% of all homes selling above their list price.  Perhaps the amazing part of those sales is that when you look at sales under $1.5 million that number goes up to 87% and if you look only at those houses listed between $400,000-700,000 the number of homes sold above list hits a staggering 96%.

The condo market continues to differentiate itself from its freehold cousin and as always is less concerned with long weekends and family holidays. While sales were off marginally from the previous week, new listings surged with nearly 22% more units coming to market over the previous week. Where the condo market is not differing from the freehold market is in units selling above the asking price, with 68% of sales occurring above the list price.