Well the stats for May are in and this real estate market continues to take everyone by surprise. May 2007 set an all-time, all-month record for resale homes in the GTA with over 11,000 transactions.
To give you an idea of the strength of this market, no previous single-month sales total ever topped 10,000, never mind 11,000. The s0-called real estate gurus keep saying that the market has reached its peak and that it's downhill from there. Well, they've been saying that at least since early 2005! 2006 was supposed to be lower sales than '05. Nope. Ditto for 2007. And likewise, it continues to defy the experts and continues to climb.
Note that this isn't considered to be an over-heated market with heavy participation in the market by speculators. The month to month increase in the average price of a home continues to remain fairly consistent with annual growth working out to between 4-6% which is pretty much the historical norm.
Sure there are still geographic areas that are hotter than others - it's not consistent across the GTA. And some areas have their own hot/cold cycles, too. Bidding wars are still out there in the areas of very high demand, but to be honest, some of the bidding wars can be induced by deliberately pricing homes below the local market value to spur a bidding war. It can be a risky proposition that can also backfire because there's no predicting when a particular area might fall out of favour/interest for awhile.
We're heading into what's been the traditionally slower time of year through the summer when most buyers and sellers are either moving into their new places or preparing their current ones for the next up-cycle in the Fall. It should be interesting to see if June does slow down as expected.
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