Average home prices in Aurora took a slight dip in June compared with last month, according to the latest statistics from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board.
Aurora saw an average price of $1,403,913 in June compared to $1,443,822 in May, with 83 properties sold in June, slightly higher than May’s tally of 73.
New listings dipped with 187 new listings hitting the market in Aurora last month compared with 214 in May. There were 232 active listings on the market in June, compared to 228 in May.
Aurora was also down 1.17 per cent year-on-year compared with its MLS Home Price Index Composite benchmark of $1,415,100.
The slight dip in price can be attributed to an increase in the overall housing inventory, with the number of sales remaining relatively fixed in Aurora, according to Dylan Silbernagel, a sales representative with Keller Williams Realty Centres.
“We may still be slow, but we were coming off kind of a high — a delayed high from last spring, last year,” he said.
“What I think one of the biggest challenges that our market is dealing with is a lag, because we've been holding more inventory, with less buyers taking action right now, because of affordability. Even our busy times where we would expect more units to be selling, we're just slowly starting to chip away and clear out inventory that had been sitting there for a while.”
The average price for a detached home in Aurora was $1,725,040 in June, down slightly from $1,762,427 in May. There were 47 detached homes sold in Aurora in June, comprising more than half of the month’s sales. That’s a similar figure to last year, even though prices are slightly down.
The average price of an alt/row/townhouse was $1,099,528 in June up slightly from $1,092,380 in May.
“We're seeing new listings, and months of inventory increase across the board. I think a lot of that had to do with sellers waiting until a rate cut happened,” he said. “So you’ve got a lot of sellers, or homeowners running through the same door, trying to list at the same time, now that there's been a rate cut. Unfortunately, that rate cut doesn't really help buyers at this point.”
Throughout the Greater Toronto Area there has been a big jump in inventory, with 23,613 active listings in June compared with 14,108 active listings this time last year. That’s an increase of more than 67 per cent.
That is having an impact on prices. The MLS Home Price Index Composite benchmark was down by 4.6 per cent on a year-over-year basis in June 2024.
Across the Greater Toronto area, the number of homes sold dipped to 6,213 home sales through the Toronto regional board’s MLS System in June 2024 – a 16.4 per cent decline compared to 7,429 sales reported in June 2023.
“The GTA housing market is currently well-supplied. Recent home buyers have benefited from substantial choice and therefore negotiating power on price. Moving forward, as sales pick up alongside lower borrowing costs, elevated inventory levels will help mitigate against a quick run-up in selling prices,” TRREB chief market analyst Jason Mercer said in a news release.
Silbernagel said he did not think inventory levels would change over the summer, and forecasted a “status quo” for July and August.
“Summer months are typically a little bit slower,” he said. “But I don't think enough is changing on the affordability side for people to clear that inventory.”
“I think things are going to be a little stagnant, you're not going to see too much action yet,” he added. “And the question will be, do we see another rate cut at the end of the month, which from what I'm hearing is possible, and then maybe even one in September? So if we get those two cuts, what does that look like?”
Silbernagel added his “biggest concern” was more inventory hitting the market if home owners cannot afford upcoming mortgage renewals.
“For my clients, a few of them have renewals coming up next year,” he said. “They've got a big family trip scheduled for this fall. But that's not something that they'll be able to do next year, when the renewal kicks in. They’ve already found a way to tighten their belt.”
Provincewide, Ontario home prices inched very slightly upward in June, continuing a broad trend of stability set in February that ended a five-month fall that began last summer, according to figures released by the Canadian Real Estate Association.
On a year-over-year basis, the average single-family home in the province sold for $954,900 in June, down 5.1 per cent from the average of $1,005,700 they sold for in June of 2023.
Silbernagel said while he did not expect a busy summer, now can be a good time for buyers, with more inventory meaning buyers have more power and choice.
“I think the people that can afford it and are savvy, there's a lot of opportunity in this market right now, like a down market is one of the best times to make a move ‘up purchase,’” he said.
“Some of the people that we're helping the most right now where they're like, ‘OK, I'm in a townhouse our family is growing, we would like to move up to a detached.’ Now is really the best time for them to do that.”
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— with files from Patrick Cain
