Don't Panic! Ontario's Fair Housing Plan Isn't Affecting The Real Estate Market Yet

The phone's been ringing and emails have been pouring through with home sellers ready to hit the panic button after the introduction of Ontario's Fair Housing Plan package on April 20, 2017.

Take a deep breath and relax ...  Without getting into any details of this plan, let's simply look at the overall real estate picture in the GTA in the last 60-90 days and forget about the government's plan.

Going back to February, the Toronto Real Estate Board reported that year-over-year sales were up 5.7% and listings were down by 12.5% - a clear indication of shortage of supply.  Moving forward to March, the numbers changed with a 17.7% increase in sales and 15.2% increase in listings year-over-year - a drastic change compared to the previous month.  The real estate market had already started to naturally 'correct' itself with a healthy increase in new listings to offset and sustain buyer demand.  The anticipation is that once the number of transactions in April are disclosed, we will see that the number of sales and listings would have continued to rise steadily.

None of the proposed changes have come into effect, yet there has already been a natural shift in many areas of the Greater Toronto Area; not to mention that it started weeks before the announced proposed changes.  Sellers are still achieving great sale prices while buyers may not be competing against the 10, 15, 20 plus additional buyers on the same property, leaving them in a less stressful, less desperate, negotiating position.  Now, there are always exceptions so take this opinion as simply that, an opinion of the overall picture.

Are there some components of the Fair Housing Plan that could affect real estate buyers and sellers? Certainly.  However, your everyday run of the mill consumers will still need to buy and sell real estate due to regular life changes, and that will never change.