Over the next several weeks, Brian Persaud will be contributing a series of guest columns to UrbanToronto. Brian is a Toronto-based real estate agent, investor, analyst, TV host, producer and author of the forthcoming book, Profitable Investing in Condominiums: Strategies, Tips and Expert Advice for the Canadian Real Estate Investor. He studies the Toronto condo market and a is a good friend to UrbanToronto.

The Toronto condo market is hot, no matter how you slice it and no matter who is reporting the data:

• According to Urbanation, there have been 27,224 sales over the past 12 months, obliterating the record of the calendar year 2007, which as 22,624.

• As of September Realnet reports 20,729 sales (best year for “High Density” units, according to Realnet, was 22,408 in 2007)

• As of September, Year to Date Sales are up 53.5% and unsold inventory is down 14.9% Supply is at record low levels

• Land investments are back to near peak levels and land prices are pushing individually unit prices up substantially

• This year it takes a developer 10 months to hit the 70% sale threshold (in 2005 it took 13 months)

• A point to note, right after we had the crazy 2007, there was a significant drop in sales in 2008. We’ll discuss if we are in an oversupply bubble situation in a future blog post. This week, we are discussing what’s been going on in the market with the data gathered as of September.

September had 19 launches:

• While the 905 had more launches (9 of the 19) downtown Toronto had more units (1395 of the total 3605)

• Going on lead from UrbanToronto Forum member, Urban Dreamer, I took a look at the registration dates with Tarion’s Licensed Builder Directory. UD feels many of the new projects are done by first time developers, and he’s right. There are some new entrants entered the high rise game, some with very big projects (e.g. Gemterra). These dates may be skewed because a developer may have changed their company name recently.

Conclusion:

• The Condo Market is hot with a diverse range of players with differing levels of experience.

• The 905 has been gaining more and more market share.

Stay tuned for my next column, when I'll discuss the numbers with a comparison to the economic fundamentals of the region.

All sales data presented in this article was sourced from from RealNet and N Barry Lyon and Associates.