Toronto's real estate market continues to be so overrun with homes no one is buying

Not even shockingly high inventory levels and low buying activity can drive Toronto home prices down, apparently, as the latest market stats paint a picture of a stubbornly overpriced market that no one seems interested in trying to afford anymore.

The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) figures from May show another month that a glut of homes in the city have come up for sale and sat untouched by buyers still wary of high interest rates, economic uncertainty and costs that won't go down despite these factors.

There were 21.7 per cent fewer condos and houses sold last month than in May 2023, while the number of new listings surged by a staggering 21.1 per cent in the same time period.

The comparison between the number of new/active residential real estate listings in Toronto last month and the number of home sales during the same time is astounding. Chart from TRREB.

The numbers themselves really put things in perspective, and are enough to make anyone wonder how Toronto remains so expensive and even remotely competitive for real estate: while the month saw a total of only 7,013 homes switching hands, a whopping 18,612 new homes came onto the market, making for a total of 21,760 active listings.

The average price, meanwhile, only dropped a few per cent compared to the same time last year, hitting $1,165,691, which was actually slightly above the average price for April 2024 on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Make them $400K again and they will be gone tomorrow.

— Mike Pengelly (@mikepengellyCA) May 12, 2024

TRREB writes in its May report that, given the interest rate cut by the Bank of Canada Wednesday morning — the first since March 2020 — "affordability is expected to improve further," though "as demand picks up, we will likely see renewed upward pressure on home prices as competition between buyers increases."