April house sales surge 17% in Toronto, 37% in Vancouver

Canada's two hottest housing markets got hotter in April, with the number of sales in Toronto up 17 per cent from last year and Vancouver sales surging 37 per cent.

The Toronto Real Estate Board reported 11,303 house sales in the Greater Toronto Area in April, and a five per cent surge in new listings as buyers decided to test the market.

The average selling price rose 10 per cent yearoveryear to $635,932, with a detached single-family home in the 416 area code region selling for an average of $1,056,114.

Residential property sales in Metro Vancouver reached 4,179, compared to the 3,050 salesin April 2014, and up 2.9 per cent from March, which also saw record sales numbers.

Few new listings in Vancouver

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver says people are not looking to sell their homes, with listings falling 19 per cent since last year. Supply is especially tight in Metro Vancouver, where the average selling price of a detached home rose 12.5 per cent to $1,078,900.

"The supply of homes for sale today in the region is not meeting the demand we're seeing from homebuyers. This is putting upward pressure on prices, particularly in the detached home market," REBGV president Darcy McLeod said in a news release.

The composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Metro Vancouver rose 8.5 per cent to $673,000.

A study of the Toronto and Vancouver markets by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporationlast week found both overvalued, but said there was little risk of a crash in prices because of high demand. Low interest rates continue to lure buyers into the market and there is little new supply, except in the Toronto condo market, where sales are flatter.

The average price of a resale condo in Toronto is $407,612, a 5.8 per cent increase from last year.

Urbanation, a source of information on the Toronto condo market, reports that the number of new condos coming on the market is in decline, with just 1,436 new units coming onstream in the first quarter of the year, a 58 per cent drop from last year.