A house in Toronto lately sold for more than $ 1 million over asking, as the average price for houses sold in the Greater Toronto Area in December, 2016 skyrocketed by 20 per cent of the prices over the previous December, 2015.
The split-level home, located along 19 Talwood Dr. in the Lawrence Avenue East and Don Mills Road area, sold by Ecko Jay Realty Ltd Brokerage on Nov. 10, 2016 for $2,658, 000 after being listed at world prices of $1,488, 800.
The open-concept property offered “privacy galore” and “genuinely feels like being in the two countries,” according to the listing description, and has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a garage, a pond and sits on half an acre of land adjacent to roads and parkland and very close to famous Edwards Gardens..
Ecko Jay, the real estate broker who sold the property, told Global News the house was on the market for 1 week and had 15 offers before it was sold. He added it was intentionally priced lower to create a bid war.
Toronto-based real estate solicitor Bob Aaron told significantly undervaluing real estate listings is a common tactic real estate agents use in Toronto to drive up competition.
“It’s just a gimmick to get attention and to induce a bid campaign. It can backfire, especially if nobody shows any interest or they get offers around that price and not the rise in price ,” he said.
“So it’s dangerous and this time it worked and that’s because there are so few listings available in the market.”
The latest statistics from the Toronto Real Estate Board depict annual home sales in the GTA hit record numbers in 2016, with 113,133 residential property sales through the MLS system in 2016 — at 11.8 per cent higher over 2015.
TREB commissioned Ipsos to conduct an online survey of TREB realtors from Oct. 5 to Oct. 21, and reported the average price of a home sold in the GTA rose to $ 730,472 in December, 2016, up 20 per cent of the prices from December, 2015.
“If you look at the demands of the house ownership in the GTA over the last year, obviously we find very low interest rates but that was coupled with a relatively strong regional economy,” told Jason Mercer, administrator of market analysis for TREB.
We find lower unemployment, we find income growing over the rate of inflation so a lot of households are certainly confident in their ability to purchase and pay for a home in the longer term, but what they are up against in a lot of cases is a real shortage of supply listings.”
Mercer said while there were more than 100,000 deals done through the MLS system, in a second consecutive record year, there is a “lack of listings” of houses for sale that is driving up rival bids and price growth.
“It only gets back to the fact that while we’ve seen sellers’ market conditions over the last two or three years, they only grew stronger this year ,” he told, adding he expects to see home buys continue to grow under the current market conditions this year in 2017.
“And if we don’t see any sort of change on the listing side we should continue to see upward pressure on home prices.”
Aaron commented given the relatively short supply of homes, the risk in underselling a home such as the 19 Talwood Dr. property is smaller to the listing agent.
“A more realistic listing price might well be $2.2 million, but when you undervalue it greatly, it gets the attention of so many people and they are likely had a huge bidding and a lineup in front of the house,” he said.
“So it was sold and everybodybecame happy except the purchaser I suppose. The numbers of X dollars above asking to me are comparatively meaningless. It’s the market out there and the arms-length open market structure seems to work and that determines the value.”
Source: Global News
