Friday, August 25, 2017

Sales Bubble? Average GTA Prices and Sales volumes can seem confusing - I'll try and remove some of the confusion

I just received a question from a reader and thought I would share the question and my answer to you.

The question was:

Hello Mark,

I  was able to observe  some variances the monthly price statics in your website and other data sources as noted below.  Since you're a professional Engineer I am confident that you have much stronger quantitative skills than most realtors and was wondering if you could help me to reconcile some real estate pricing data? 

I am specifically referring to the the Oakville Milton and York Region pricing data.   



Regards,

G.

Hello G

Thank you for your email.

The Huffington Post article you are referring to below flips back and forth talking about volume of sales and sales prices.  Then at the end of the article they quote that prices are still up comparing July 2016 to July 2017 by 5.1%   I can see how this can seem confusing.

The chart they show are actual selling prices in the two areas, York and Oakville Milton.  The article states that the graphs are 'Residential Sales" and I'm assuming they are showing "only" detached home prices, not the overall average residential (which would include condos townhomes etc. I say this because I don't believe the average of ALL residential in Oakville and Milton in the spring was ever about $2.3Million.    Seems high for the 'average'  Regardless, I would say that the graphs are likely very accurate. 

You could write the author and ask where the data came from and what the actual data is showing.

You can see my graph of the data here:


It is similar to the data shown in the article.

My graph also shows a drop in the overall TREB average single family residential price from approximately $916k in March 2017 to $746k in July 2017 – a giant overall drop in average price.  This coincides with the seasonal summer slowdown period, so it's not quite as dramatic as you many think.  On the other hand, it's only the second time since January of 1995 that summer prices have dropped below the previous fall average prices – this signals a significant change in the marketplace.

It's not all doom and gloom, but it shows how quickly the market can turn.  We've seen this before in 1988/1989 and again in 2008/2009 - this could be a short blip in the market or a trend, only time will tell!

I hope this helps a little.

Please let me know if you have other questions

Thank you,
Mark