Lack of supply driving Toronto’s record prices

TORONTO• Amid record prices for new detached homes that soared 27.5 per cent in 2016, Toronto builders say they could sell even more houses but they just don’t have them.

The Building Industry Land Development Association, which has about 1,400 members in the land development, home building and professional renovation industry, says the average sale price of a detached home in the Greater Toronto Area climbed about $ 273,000 in 2016 to $1,264,604.

The industry group said 2016 was also a record year in terms of the lack of inventory for all housing while sales levels and prices of high- rise condo set new highs — as consumers continued to look to those units to escape prices in the lowrise sector of the market.

“We have a shortage of housing supply in the GTA that is approaching crisis levels,” said Bryan Tuckey, chief executive of BILD, in a statement. “Housing is selling as quickly as the industry can bring it to market and the lack of developable land that is serviced with infrastructure, excessive red tape, out-of-date zoning and NIMBYism are hindering our ability to bring more to the market.”

There were 29,186 new high- rise units sold across the GTA in 2016, a new record and a 30 per cent increase from a year ago, according to Altus Group, which is BILD’s source for data on the new home market. Sales were up in every district tracked in the GTA, but Durham high- rise sales more than doubled from a year earlier.

Across the GTA, there were 47,161 new homes sold in 2016, 62 per cent highrise units and 38 per cent low-rise. The mix of low-rise versus high- rise continues to favour condominiums as available land shrinks.

The record year for sales in the GTA remains 2002, but in that year, when 53,660 units sold, 72 per cent were low- rise and 28 per cent were high-rise.