[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto leads Vancouver in luxury home market"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Tess Kalinowski reports about Toronto's real estate issues.

Bridle Path estates, Rosedale palaces and Forest Hill piles are outselling Vancouver’s famously expensive high-end mountain and oceanfront views, says luxury realtor Sotheby’s International Realty Canada.

Toronto’s lead in Canadian luxury home sales continued through the summer and is expected to carry on for the remainder of 2016, says the company’s fall forecast, published Wednesday.

Sales of $1-million-plus Toronto-area single-family homes rose 83 per cent year over year in July and August. That’s 3,026 homes, with 55 per cent of them inside Toronto’s borders. Meanwhile, Vancouver saw a decline of 30 per cent in July and 65 per cent in August, for a total of 288 sales of $1-million-plus homes.

That’s not entirely surprising given that the average cost of a detached home in Toronto was about $1.2 million, said Sotheby’s CEO Brad Henderson.

“While $1 million is still a considerable amount of money, it’s difficult to find a single-family home in the city of Toronto for less than $1 million and it is not uncommon to find homes in the $2-million, $3-million or even $4-million-plus range,” he said.