Two years ago I wrote a blog post asking the question, "When does the spring real estate market actually begin?"
Among other things, I took a look at the downtown market stats (districts C01 & C08) and found that there was an almost 80% increase in new listings in the week after Easter, compared to the week before.
Although we only have three full days of stats for the same week in 2012, I thought it would be interesting to see how they stack up against those from 2010.
Interestingly, the contrast we saw in 2010 isn't there now and this week's numbers aren't looking much different from last week's...
Here's the article as posted in April 2010, with the updated 2012 stats (you can read the original article with 2010 stats here):
When Does The Spring Real Estate Market Actually Begin?
The answer to the above question depends largely on who you're asking. Speaking as a Realtor I'd say that the spring market actually starts as early as January. Granted, the number of listings and sales this early in the year aren't going to match the level of activity we see in March, April, May,... None-the-less there's activity in January and it's certainly the start of a market that will grow over the coming months.
Many feel that the spring market doesn't really begin until the month of March. There's some truth to this in the sense that March is generally when we start to see signs of warmer weather and buyers are more apt to tour the neighbourhood for open houses.
March is a little tricky though, as a number of buyers, sellers and realtors aren't fully participating due to commitments associated with "March Break". At least those with families anyway.
I would suggest that the safest bet is to consider the week after Easter Weekend as the full fledged beginning of the spring real estate market. A number of sellers wait specifically until after Easter to put their property on the market. And a number of buyers wait until then to kick their search into high gear.
However, this year may be a bit of an exception. Monday through Wednesday of last week we saw 176 new listings (condos, lofts, and houses) hit the market in TREB districts C01 and C08 (east of Dufferin / south of Bloor / west of the DVP). Monday through Wednesday of this week we saw 172 new listings. Not much difference at all. A decrease actually.
What does this mean? I'd suggest that it means a number of buyers chose not to wait until after Easter this year to list. And indeed, if you look at the numbers you'll find that there were more new listings this year in the week before Easter (238) compared to the same week in 2010 (190).
Regardless of when the spring market actually starts, we're at mid-April now and things are movin' & shakin'. And they'll remain so for the coming months. Then what? The summer market of course! When does that start? Well......
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