BY RON BARLAY
The Mississauga real estate market is in the midst of a dynamic spring market. In fact, the Toronto Real Estate Board just released figures that reveal that the housing market across the GTA is very active and flourishing and hit a new sales record.
TREB reported 12,085 home sales through the Toronto MLS system in April, 2016. This is a substantial increase of 7.4 per cent, year-over-year, compared to April, 2015. Large annual increases in transactions were noted for most of the major home types, across the GTA as a whole. April’s sales result represented a new record, says the TREB.
Even the seasonally low temperatures for this early spring couldn’t keep buyers away. Our office is bustling with activity and we are experiencing a very robust spring market. Bidding wars, bully-offers and selling prices tens of thousands of dollars above asking, are all occurring very frequently.
According to numbers just released by TREB, home selling prices continued to trend upward in April. The MLS® Home Price Index Composite Benchmark was up by 12.6 per cent year-over-year. The average selling price was up by 16.2 per cent. The higher growth rate reported for the average home price, as compared to the MLS® HPI, points to a greater share of high-end home sales this year compared to last.
In Mississauga, the average home price was $654,819 in April and the average price for a detached home was $966,467.
The spring is typically the busiest time of the year in the Mississauga and Greater Toronto real estate market, in general. This is the time when the most buyers are out searching for a home to purchase. Fewer potential home buyers desire to search for a new home during the cold months and therefore when the temperatures begin to rise, buyer activity does, too. Furthermore, buyers with children typically want to be in their new home before the new school year in September. These reasons led to a bustling spring market typically between March and June.
The best time to sell a home is during a seller’s market, a market that has more buyers than sellers and hence higher prices result from this excess of demand over supply. (On the other hand, a buyer’s market is a market which has more sellers than buyers. Low prices usually result from this excess of supply over demand.) Obviously, you want to try to sell your home when demand is high, as prices will be pushed up, as is what it currently occurring. This also means that the general state of the economy influences demand. What are interest rates like and what is the forecast for them? Current low interest rates mean there will be more potential buyers, which is great for sellers.
