Toronto home sales saw a huge surge last month

Bubble what? Bubble who? If a dreaded "burst" really is on the horizon for Toronto's real estate market, it's certainly taking some time.

Home sales across the GTA were up a whopping 24.3 per cent last month, year over year, according to newly released data from the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB.)

Listings, meanwhile, were down by 9.1 per cent over the same time period, reflecting what realtors call "tightening market conditions."

"While the OSFI mortgage stress test has clearly had an impact on the number of home sales over the last year-and-a-half, for most GTA residents the goal of home ownership has not diminished," said TREB CEO John DiMichele in the firm's July Market Figures Report.

"In fact, we're seeing growing pent-up demand for ownership housing, especially as the number of GTA households continues to increase by 40,000 to 50,000 each year due to strong population growth."

And just as home sales are up, so too are home prices — by roughly 3.2 per cent across the region.

Toronto Real Estate Board President Michael Collins announced that Greater Toronto Area REALTORS® reported 8,595 sales through TREB’s MLS® System in July 2019. This result was up by 24.3 per cent compared to July 2018

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— TREB (@TREBhome) August 7, 2019

Area realtors reported 8,595 sales in July of 2019, 3,110 of them within the City of Toronto proper. The average selling price for those homes? $839,943.

TREB notes that "higher density home types" — read: condos, townhouses and semi-detached units — are driving much of that price growth.

"Broadly speaking, increased competition between buyers for available properties has resulted in relatively strong price growth above the rate of inflation for semi-detached houses, townhouses and condominium apartments," said TREB Chief Market Analyst Jason Mercer in this week's release.

"However, the single-detached market segment, which has arguably been impacted most by the OSFI stress test, has experienced a slower pace of price growth, with average detached prices remaining lower than last year's levels in some parts of the GTA."

In other words: Actual houses still remain far more expensive than condos in Toronto, but they're growing more slowly, if at all, in terms of price on a year-over-year basis.