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Toronto house prices jump nearly 17 pct in June

Xinhua, July 7, 2016 Adjust font size:

House prices in Canada's largest city continued to surge as potential home buyers struggled with a lack of supply in the hot real estate market, said a report Wednesday by the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB).

The average price of a home in the Toronto area, which includes the regions of Peel, Halton, York and Durham, as well as Simcoe County, jumped by almost 17 percent in June compared with the same month last year.

An average home in Toronto area cost 746,546 Canadian dollars (574,019 U.S. dollars) in June, up 16.8 percent from 639,309 Canadian dollars in June 2015. That average encompasses all home types, including detached houses, attached houses and condos.

Though the number of sales also rose across the region, 12,794 this June compared with 11,905 last June, the number of new listings was down 3.8 percent.

That lack of supply was a key factor driving prices, according to TREB president Larry Cerqua.

"Demand is at a record level," he wrote in the report. "Would-be home buyers continue to face an uphill battle against a constrained supply of listings."

Average Toronto home prices have surged more than 85 percent in the past decade, from 335,907 Canadian dollars in 2005 to more than 622,000 Canadian dollars in 2015, according to data from TREB.

Cerqua also said TREB will conduct further research into "issues affecting lack of supply" as "the federal, provincial and local levels of government discuss housing policy in the coming months."

News of the sale price increase comes as governments ponder how to cool hot housing markets, particularly in Vancouver and Toronto.

Vancouver real estate board figures showed the benchmark price for all residential properties in Metro Vancouver was 917,800 Canadian dollars in June, a 32 percent jump since June 2015.

Residential property sales in Metro Vancouver totalled 4,400 in June, an increase of about 0.5 percent compared with one year earlier, but a drop of nearly 8 percent since May.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson has proposed a tax on vacant homes in that city, where skyrocketing housing prices have been driven in part by foreign buyers who using the homes as an investment.

Last month, the Canadian federal government announced a working group to monitor the housing market and issues around affordability. Endit