Toronto Home Sales Plunge Under New Lending Rules
- Sales fall 22 percent from last year’s record-setting pace
- Benchmark prices remain flat; board sees growth later in year
Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
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Toronto home sales tumbled in the first month of 2018, as tougher mortgage qualification rules came into play and borrowing costs rose.
Sales in Canada’s biggest city fell 22 percent to 4,019 units from a year earlier, according to data released Tuesday by the Toronto Real Estate Board. It was the weakest month of sales for January since 2009. The average price of a home sold in Toronto was C$736,783 ($587,968), down 4.1 percent from January 2017, though little changed from December.