LACKIE: Choppy waters ahead for GTA real estate market
Author of the article:
Brynn Lackie
Publishing date:
May 21, 2022 • 1 day ago • 3 minute read • 11 Comments

Real estate sales in Toronto aren’t going down, despite the pandemic. PHOTO BY FILES /Submitted
For months it has felt like the ground was shifting beneath us and now it seems even the deniers among us are finally willing to say it out loud.
One need only look to the wall-to-wall press coverage — the market has shifted! The bubble has burst! The end is nigh!
After two years of hot, hot, heat, declining month-over-month sales data now shows that it’s undeniable that our pandemic real estate boom has come to an abrupt conclusion.
Now it seems we find ourselves back in uncharted territory with enough at play that alarm is clearly warranted — ahem, a war in Europe, a stock market taking a beating, rampant inflation, an energy crisis, and interest rates on the rise — all the while having to reconcile what seem like clear warning signs with market forces and consumer behaviors that have consistently defied logic time and time again.
For all of the well-warranted doomsday predictions, there are still optimists who think the panic is overblown. And while it would be easy to label them oblivious denialists, or assume they’re just real estate agents or politicians with a vested interest in keeping things humming right along, it would be a mistake to jump to conclusions or even to simply assume that what lies ahead will be uniform or even.
But what is actually happening?
If you’re in the central core of Toronto, not much.
Sure, the buyer pool has shrunk, likely as a response to rising borrowing costs and uncertainty, but likely also market absorption following years of incredible volume and sales activity.
Fewer buyers and lessened competition is shaking out to mean sellers have lost some of their power and prices have stopped the meteoric rise. Underpricing with an offer night — once a sure-fire way to drive a bidding war and fetch top dollar — has increasingly revealed itself to be a gamble for sellers.
But make no mistake, good product is still moving and at a decent price, broadly speaking — though perhaps for less than sellers have come to expect.