Even if realtors and developers want to believe that Toronto's real estate market is holding strong in the face of record inflation and sky-high interest rates, the steep downturn in sales volumes — and now, declining prices — tell a different story.

The latest report from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB), released Wednesday, says that the number of homes switching hands, the prices of those homes, and the number of new listings were all up in July 2023 compared to July 2022 after some months of uncertainty.

But, other analyses of certain sectors of the market show that prices for new condos just dropped for the first time in a decade in the last quarter, and the 12-month running total for new condo sales sunk to the lowest level since 2009.

Interest in luxury housing is also waning, with homes sitting on the market for far longer and international buyers put off by new legislation, though prices for the most expensive of the region's homes are actually still on the rise.

Among the 27 pages of new data from TRREB are the number of sales and average prices for different types of homes in different parts of the GTA in July, as well as the percentage of change in those stats year-over-year.

While the organization reported 7.8 per cent more sales last month than the same time last year, with a mean selling price of $1,118,374 ($1,066,184 for the City of Toronto specifically) compared to $1,073,213 ($1,019,100 for Toronto) in July 2022, the average price for the year-to-date is actually down by a substantial amount.

So far in 2023, their have been 43,908, homes sold in the GTA, and the average price of those homes has been $1,141,260.

Looking at the same data points from 2022, we can see that there had been 51,940 sales by this time last year, with an average price of $1,239,104 (per TRREB's news release yesterday, though it is noteworthy that the 2022 charts in their actual report skew slightly different, showing a YTD average price of $1,222,174 by July).

That's a fall of nearly 10,000 sales and $100,000 in the typical price, showing how much quieter the market has been this year as prospective buyers wait for more financial stability and lower lending rates to make a move.

"Home sales continued to be above last year's levels in July... With that being said, it does appear that the sales momentum that we experienced earlier in the spring has stalled somewhat since the Bank of Canada restarted its rate tightening cycle in June," the report's overview reads, noting concerns about "borrowing costs, jobs and the overall economy."

"Over the long term, the demand for ownership housing will remain strong on the back of record population growth. However, many homebuyers will continue to be on the sidelines in the short term until the direction of monetary policy and the economy becomes clearer."