Selling a Condo in Toronto
There are a lot more condos in Toronto on the market this summer over last summer. There were 3976 new listings in July 2020 as compared to 2401 new listings in July 2019. If you are a condo owner who wants to sell right now. What do you do? First, Don’t panic. Although looking at one month makes it seem like inventory levels are very high, our year-over-year condo listings are right on track. There were 15,859 new condo listings from January to July 2020 versus 15,835 new condo listings from January to July 2019. Prices have also gone up. The average price for a condo in July 2019 was $628,022 and the average price for a condo in July 2020 was $687,898. The issue with this summer market is that we are playing catch up from what would have been a busy spring market. Most listings stopped during COVID. This was especially true for condo buildings where many buildings were not allowing showings during the peak of the shutdown. Our elevated inventory levels are essentially five months of listings crammed into two months.
The issue remains that if you are a seller who is currently trying to sell your condo, you have a lot of competition. Even though prices have gone up and average days on market have actually gone down from this time last year, you still need to find a way to make your condo stand out from all the other listings. There are two ways to do this and you must do them both to be successful:
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Underprice your unit for a bidding war: In this market, the only way to get a lot of attention on your unit is to underprice it. By underpricing you get more offers, and more offers push up your ultimate sale price.
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Stage your condo: marketing is everything. Especially now when buyers and agents are hesitant to go out to showings, you need to make sure your unit shows beautifully in photos. There is no work-around with staging and not all stagers are created equally. Hire a good stager (or have your agent hire a good stager) and make your unit beautiful. It is the only way.
Most of all. Breathe! With the exception of a few downtown buildings, the condo market is doing just fine.
Robyn VanderVennen
The Kim Kehoe Team
