In mid-March, Ontario declared a state of emergency due to COVID-19, and within three weeks, the Bank of Canada cut the overnight interest rate to a decade-low of 0.25%, and half a million homeowners deferred their mortgages. As expected, many buyers and sellers suspended their home searches and sales in response to public health and safety measures, and uncertain economic conditions. 

To understand how market activity and housing competition conditions for detached properties evolved during Ontario’s state of emergency, Zoocasa tracked sales and new listing data from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board on a biweekly basis and compared the figures to 2019 activity for the same timeframe. 

Zoocasa found that after hitting a trough in April, sales and new listings for detached houses in all five GTA regions rose steadily through May and June. In each GTA region (City of Toronto, Peel Region, York Region, Durham Region and Halton Region), the gap between 2020 and 2019 sales was widest between early April and early May, with sales dropping by as much as 75%. In every region, the extensive sales gap started to close by the latter half of May, and by mid-June, sales even outpaced 2019 levels for the same period in some GTA markets like Halton and Durham. 

In June, new listings recovered to at least 75% of last year’s levels in each GTA region. This followed a steep drop in listings between early April and early May in every region; as low as 26% of 2019 levels in York Region, where new listings were most impacted. 

Continue to read on: ZooCasa.com