How about those Toronto Maple Leafs, eh?

Raise your hand if you were alive the last time the Toronto Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup.

I see……..maybe……six of you with your hands raised?

Appraiser?

East Yorker?

Who else?

The funny thing about being a Leafs fan is that you can say, “This is our year” over and over, and when the Leafs finally do win a Stanley Cup, a lot of those fans are going to say, “I told you so.”

How long can you claim, “The Leafs are going to break the curse and win the Cup,” before you lose credit when they do so?

Five weeks ago, I wrote this in a TRB blog post:

Raise your hand if you think that $1,095,617 average sale price from February is going to surge?  I’m predicting it’s up at least 4.0%, month-over-month, which would take it to $1,140,000.  Yes, a far cry from the peak in February of 2022, but substantially higher than the fall of 2022.

That proved to be incorrect, of course.

The average home price in Toronto only increased by 1.2% from February to March; not 4.0% as I predicted.

It made no sense to me, as I wrote in a subsequent blog post as well as my eNewsletter.

The market changed substantially somewhere around mid-February.

Those of us who live and breathe the market can tell you what it’s like to just “feel” the market move.

The number of offers on “offer nights” started increasing.

More of the sale prices the day after raised eyebrows.

The small percentage of freeholds being listed with “offers anytime” disappeared, and we started to far more offer nights on condos.

By March, the market was somewhere between “hot” and “red-hot,” as it wasn’t exactly peak insanity, and yet hot would be an understatement.

At the end of the month, I figured we had just experienced a 4% jump in prices, but I was wrong.

Only 1.2%.

(womp womp)

So now le me ask the (not so) obvious question: if the market goes up 4.0% the next month, may I claim credit?

In the same way that people were celebrating, “The Leafs won the first round of the playoffs, I told you they would,” having said that for years and years, may I claim credit for the statistical movement in the market?

Last month, the average home price clocked in at $1,153,269.  Perhaps that’s a good place to start.

A refresher, as always:

The shaded area, in case it’s not obvious, is the peak in February of last year.

So now let me ask the (should be) obvious question: have we hit bottom?

When I asked this question in a March blog post, the answers were not all in the affirmative.

Bankersorta said November, 2024.

Anwar said May, 2025.

Derek said December, 2023.

JL said December, 2023.

Last, but not least, Sigruper said February of 2027.

But when I look at the average home price of $1,153,269 up against a January trough of 1,038,668, I want to double-down on the idea that we have hit bottom, and that the average home price will never drop below $1,038,668 again.

Sheesh.  2027.  Sigruper, come on!

Now, to be fair, we should come to expect that the average home price in April would increase from March, since history would tell us as much.

Have a look:

Only three times since 2002 has the average home price decreased from March to April, and one of those years was the pandemic-stricken spring of 2020 where the average home price, on paper, dropped a stupid 9.0%!

If history is any indication, we should expect to see an increase in April.

Although if recent history is any indication, specifically the past three years, then perhaps this could be defined as a surprise.

Either way, I think the 4.0% increase is in line with what buyers, agents, and even sellers are “feeling” out there in the market, and I think this is a truer representation of value than the depressed numbers we saw to star the year.

Much of the reason for the increase, of course, is because of supply and demand.  Notably that supply is low and demand is high!

If we want to be pessimists, we can point to the 7,531 sales recorded in April and note that this is the third-fewest since 2002:

Of course, 2020 doesn’t count, so this could be viewed as the second-fewest.

It’s worth noting that there were only 8,008 in 2022.

But as we saw last month, and probably the month before, the number of new listings is even more dire:

Take out the pandemic-stricken month of April, 2020, and we just witnessed the fewest listings in April in the history of TRREB stats!

Year-over-year, new listings were down 38.3% and sales were down 5.2%.

Think about that for a moment:

There’s 38.3% less being offered for sale but only 5.2% less is selling.

Surely this has to be the single-most telling statistic from the month of April, no?

Surely this has to sum up our market more than any other statement, right?

Then again, if we look at the interaction between supply and demand, specifically between sales and listings, it gives us another data point worth exploring.

Here’s a look at the SNLR in April from 2002 onwards:

Despite the lowest number of sales in the month of April, ever, save for the pandemic-affected year of 2020, the SNLR or “absorption rate” is the third highest ever.

That’s a crazy stat.

And it’s even crazier when you look to the bottom of the chart and see that the lowest SNLR ever was last year.

What a difference a year can make!

So, we know that the lack of supply and the absurd demand is causing prices to increase, but where are the prices increasing?  And how much?

The average home price in the GTA increased by 4.0% from March to April.  But if we break things down and look at the “big five” TRREB districts, we can see which districts are lagging the 4.0% increase and which are outperforming:

Peel and Toronto seem to be carrying the rest.

Actually, Toronto seems to be doing the heavy lifting here, and that 6.2%, month-over-month increase explains why the overall TRREB figure is up 4.0%, on account of how heavily weighted the 416 is.

Here’s the number of sales in each district:

Halton: 817
York: 1,370
Durham: 903
Peel: 1,384
Toronto: 2,735

Toronto represents one-out-of-five districts, or 20%, but the sales accounted for 38% last month.

Sometimes, the TRREB average goes as the 416-Toronto average goes.

Having said that, if we break down the sales-to-new-listings ratio, which was 66.3% in April, into districts, we see the opposite of what we might expect:

I don’t know about you, but I find this fascinating.

Toronto-416 led the big-five with a 6.2%, month-over-month increase in price, however, the SNLR in Toronto was the lowest of the five districts.

The TRREB average was 66.3% and yet Toronto-416 was merely 62.3%.

Can you imagine what would happen to prices in Toronto if the SNLR was on par with that of Halton or Duhram?

Staying on the subject of SNLR, I think putting the April figures in true context requires seeing what they were last month as well, so let’s do that.

Here’s the percentage change increase in SNLR from March to April:

Overall, the absorption rate in TRREB increased by 4.6%, as we know.

Durham led with a whopping 7.3% increase and Peel lagged with a modest 1.3% increase.

Seeing Halton and Durham over the 70% threshold tells me that those markets are making a comeback, and again, I want to mention again that seeing Toronto-416 coming off a sub-60% SNLR and only sitting at 62.3% tells us just how much prices could increase if this market got any tighter.

For those who still think there’s another “bottom” coming, let me show you a chart.

We saw a drop in 2017.

We saw a drop in 2022.

But here’s the TRREB average home price, monthly, from January of 2016 through April of 2023:

I’m sure the 2017 drop looked steep in 2018, just as the 2022 drop looks steep today.

But the further back you go, the sillier the idea of a long-term decline becomes.

Here’s the monthly data from 2002 to current:

Note that 2008 doesn’t even register.

And within a few years, 2017 and 2022 will be blips as well.

But this is still the proverbial “45-degree angle, left-to-right” that we’d expect in an ever-increasing market.

Alright, I think I’m entering cheerleader territory, so I’m going to stop there.

Any thoughts or opinions to the contrary, I would love to hear from you.