A funny thing happened last week.

Wait…..do I mean “funny” like a Sebastian Maniscalo clip that finds its way onto your YouTube landing page?

No, not like that.

I guess I mean “funny” like odd or interesting.

“A funny thing happened the other day,” says somebody out of an early-20th century novel, perhaps.

But I mean “funny” as in unexpected.

Yes, we’ll go with that.

What, pray tell, is unexpected out there in my line of work, in October, in this current market?

Selling four condo listings in a matter of days.

That sure is unexpected!

And the really funny thing, er, I mean the unexpected part about this is that all of these units were on the market for 30 days or more.  That is truly what was funny about this small cluster of deals last week, and it’s truly what underscores the current fall condo market.

It’s hard to accept and even harder to explain to seller-clients, but properties are taking a lot longer to sell than they were in 2023 or 2022.  However, that’s not to say that prices are affected as you might expect.

Consider this: if you saw any listing on the market 2022 for upwards of 30 days, you’d expect to see a price reduction just around the corner, if the property hasn’t already been reduced once.

But in the fall of 2024, specifically in the condo market, we’re seeing properties take 30 or 40 days to sell, but these aren’t fire-sale prices.

One of our listings sold for $680,000 on a $699,900 list price, after 36 days on the market.

Another one of our listings sold for $790,000 on a $799,900 list price after 44 days on the market.

If this was in a previous market cycle, you’d be sounding the alarm once these listings hit two weeks without an offer.  You’d probably also be reducing the price in another 1-2 weeks as well.  Not only that, after five, six, or seven weeks on the market, you’d expect to sell a $700,000 listing for $650,000, just based on the days on market that buyers use against sellers in any negotiation.

But this fall, it’s normal to see properties on the market longer, especially in the condo market.

TRREB tracks two different metrics concerning “days on market.”

One is called LDOM, which is “listing days on market,” or the number of days for that specific listing.

The other is called PDOM, which is “property days on market,” and takes into account every combined DOM from previous listings.

Here’s a four-year chart of the LDOM for all property types in the Greater Toronto Area:

Note that DOM is up every month so far in 2024.

Not only that, the spread between 2024 and prior years began to widen in March.

Here’s the PDOM chart:

It’s quite similar, although if we look at the fall of 2023, we can see exactly when properties began to take longer to sell, and how it continued into 2024.

Now, just for fun, and because I was alone on Friday night with nothing to do, I wanted to plot the average days on market (LDOM) in the overall GTA market versus that specifically for condos:

Look at February and March of 2022.  That was a ridiculous time.

Average days on market were only 11 in February and 9 in March!

But that changed in mid-2022 as DOM continued to increase, and overall, we can see that DOM were higher in 2022 over 2021, higher in 2023 over 2022, and so far this year, higher in 2024 over 2023.

Not only that, the DOM for condominiums is well ahead of the DOM for the overall GTA housing market.

So how did Q3 in the condominium market finish up?

Let’s have a look at our regular data set, and we’ll start with condo sales in the 416:

Sales declined, year-over-year, in July and August, but moderately improved in September.  We’ll see if this is an outlier or a turnaround as the fall market began, once we have the Q4 data.

But any way you look at this, these sales figures are a pittance compared to 2018, 2019, and 2021:

While sales are down significantly since 2018, 2019, and 2021, the above chart shows that sales in July, August, and September were completely in line with 2022 and 2023.

As for the 905, it looked to be in line with the 416, at least from the year-over-year sales figures:

The 905 didn’t really heat up until the 2020-pandemic, or at least comparatively, when you consider the 416.  So while the 416 condo sales data in 2023 and 2024 is well behind 2018 and 2019, it’s more on par here in the 905.

The 905 chart looks quite similar to that of the 416 in July, August, and September:

When we get to listings, however, this is where things get really interesting!

In Q1, we saw new listings somewhat in line with prior years.

In Q2, we saw new listings start to exceed prior years by a long shot and basically jump off the page.

In Q3, we saw a little bit of both:

In July, new listings remained well ahead of prior years, but the data fell back in line with 2023 and 2021 in August and September.

We’re still seeing far more new listings than average, or “normal,” but the spread isn’t quite as wide.

Now, where things are really “interesting” as I allude to above is clearly on display in the next chart:

I triple-checked that.

New listings in the 905 were in line with prior years in Q1, but since then, the numbers are just off into the stratosphere.

And last month, we saw new listings shoot up like a rocket!

What does this mean for the absorption rate, you might ask?

Through the first-half of 2024, the absorption rate in both the 416 and the 905 was significantly behind that of 2023, and 2023 was significantly behind that of 2022.  All are significantly behind 2018, 2019, and 2021.

While Q3 was in line with last year, we’re still on pace for an absorption rate this year that’s somewhere in the mid-30% range:

The absorption rate did increase in July and August, over June, but it fell right back down again in September, and that 26.1% absorption rate last month is the lowest in any month so far this year.

The absorption rate has dropped significantly from August to September, every year, so this latest decline in September is hardly unexpected.

As the following chart demonstrates, supply has far exceeded demand in the condo market so far through 2024:

The trend above suggests that the absorption rate will increase every month from here on out, so we’ll keep an eye on this in future blog posts and be sure to check in before Q4 is through.

As for the 905, that massive spike in listings has led to the lowest absorption rate I’ve ever seen:

A mere 21.2% in September!

I’ve only listed and sold one condo listing in the 905 this year, and while we didn’t have many showings, we sold in only two weeks and for just under the list price.

But that was in the spring.

The fall looks to be slowing down for the 905, even though, and call me crazy, I think the condo market in the 416 is picking up.

Here’s the chart for the 905 absorption rate, and you’ll have to look really, really far down if you want to see September…

That’s wild.

And even though this is a quarterly feature here on TRB, I’ll be sure to check on this figure in two weeks’ time when we have the October TRREB stats.

Geez, we’re only two weeks away from November!  The fall market goes by quickly.

But we’re also only two days away from the Bank of Canada’s next interest rate announcement, where it’s expected that we see a fifty basis-point cut to the key lending rate.

Perhaps an update to the “TRB Interest Rate Prediction Game” is due on Thursday?