Stakeholders in Toronto's real estate market are recovering from an astoundingly bad year that included the worst sales numbers in more than two decades, leading to much apprehension about what 2024 will hold.

Despite some predictions that the lull will continue — and questions of whether the city is on the verge of a full-on crash — new insights from RBC show that the market is already bouncing back, even without a change in the high interest rates and market uncertainty that pushed buyers away all year.

Underbidding on homes hits 10-year high in Toronto and here's where buyers offer the least 🏠 https://t.co/eOV0fyPCwL #Toronto #RealEstate #Underbidding

— blogTO (@blogTO) December 11, 2023

While dismal sales volumes and other, more concerning trends took hold in 2023, by December, far more properties were actually switching hands in the city and across Canada at large, primarily driven by the resale home market (rather than the flailing new condo market).

"The Toronto-area market woke up from its slumber," RBC economists wrote of December's figures, outlining how home resales in the region surged a whopping 21 per cent between November and December.

"The pace also picked up materially in other parts of Ontario... as Ontario and British Columbia — regions that cooled off the most since summer — recorded some of the larger increases."

London-St. Thomas saw the biggest improvement, with 26 per cent more homes selling in December than the month prior, followed by Toronto, Ottawa (up 19 per cent), Brantford and Cambridge (both up 18 per cent), North Bay (up 16 per cent) and Kitchener-Waterloo (up 10 per cent) — all good signs for realtors and sellers.

On the buyer's side, the uptick in activity did not translate to a spike in prices as one might expect, but the opposite, with the report stating that "end-of-year sparks did little to alter softening price trends — the MLS Home Price Index continued to decline on a month-to-month basis in all these markets."

Ontario home sold at $800k loss after 11 failed attempts to sell 🏠 https://t.co/npZEPyXUtx #Ontario #RealEstate

— blogTO (@blogTO) January 5, 2024

What's more, RBC experts anticipate a few more months of December-level sales numbers for prices to rise back to their notoriously sky-high levels in the city, which means anyone looking to buy for a lower-than-usual price still has a chance, though current interest rates may be prohibitive.

The report does note that it is hard to make any forecasts based on this data, as it could simply represent a one-month blip over what were notably "historically weak levels," with November marking a near-15-year low for sales, with the exception of the pandemic era.