According to a Toronto real estate agent, there are a lot more homebuyers, in comparison to last year, who are sitting on the fence and holding off on making the decision to go ahead and buy property.
The reason? With the current real estate market moving from a seller’s market to be more balanced, buyers and sellers are having a difficult time reconciling their expectations of what houses in the Toronto area should sell for. This is leading buyers to take a wait-and-see approach to home buying.
This attitude is reinforced by current sales numbers. According to the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB), compared to last year, sales of existing homes fell by 29 per cent in the first two weeks of August. In addition, over the next year, TD Bank expects national house prices to drop by up to 10 per cent. While, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) recently reported that sales were down by 30 per cent.
It seems that homebuyers are concerned about the uncertainty of house prices in the near future. Obviously, no one wants to overpay for a house, while sellers want to get as much as possible for their property.
It’s important not to overlook the fact that there have been a lot of changes to the real estate market in the past year; things like mortgage regulation changes, interest rate hikes, and the HST have likely pushed homebuyers into the market earlier than they might have done on their own.
It seems entirely possible that the drop in home sales is just a matter of the market balancing itself out.
