Toronto home sales and prices have been soaring over the past few months, even as the city remains plagued by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the month of October was no exception. 

The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board released their October Resale Housing Market Numbers today, and they show that home sales in the GTA were up again, year-over-year, for the fourth month in a row. 

TRREB said its real estate agents sold a total of 10,563 homes in October, which is a record level for the month and up by 25.1 per cent from the 8,445 transactions made in October 2019.

New home listings also reached record levels last month, according to TRREB, though this is mostly due to the pace of annual sales growth in the detached market segment.

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"Competition between buyers of single-family homes, and particularly detached houses, remained strong last month and continued to support double-digit annual rates of price growth in many GTA neighborhoods,"  said Lisa Patel, TRREB's president, in a release. 

"In contrast, condo buyers have benefited from much more choice compared to last year. Pre-COVID polling had already pointed to an increase in investor selling in 2020. The pandemic only added to this trend with a stall in economic growth and a halt to tourism impacting cashflows for many investors."

TREBB also reports that the average selling price for all home types combined in the GTA was $968,318 last month, an increase of 13.7 per cent compared to the $851,877 average in October of last year.

And in the City of Toronto specifically, the average home price for all types was $1,025,925 in October, up from $925,148 year-over-year.

"Year-to-date home sales through October were above last year's level. The economic recovery in some sectors coupled with low borrowing costs has kept home purchases top-of-mind for many GTA residents," said TRREB's Chief Market Analyst Jason Mercer in a release.

"With this being said, we have not accounted for all of the pent-up demand that resulted from the spring downturn. Expect record or near-record home sales for the remainder of 2020."

John DiMichele, TRREB's CEO, meanwhile says it's clear that high demand for housing will continue beyond COVID-19, and that the GTA will undoubtedly benefit from the federal government's high immigration targets which will likely bring even more home-buyers to Toronto and surrounding regions in the coming months and years.