There’s a lot of noise out there right now about the state of the real estate market. It seems that almost every day someone reports that the market is softening or is about to crash. I don’t understand how these conclusions are drawn because I haven’t seen any evidence of them. I do, however, see plenty of multiple offers and plenty of buyers chasing a smaller number of homes.

The residential real estate market in central Toronto continues to be strong. There remain more buyers than sellers and good homes that are properly priced are selling quickly and for over their asking prices. Granted, there will always be homes that don’t sell on the first day, more expensive homes will take longer to sell and July and August will be quiet months. But these occurrences are fairly typical in every kind of market and have been so throughout history. To conclude that they are evidence that the market has changed is just plain wrong. At times, I think that the media wants to see if it has sufficient power to change the market. After all, perception can become reality. If enough people believe what they read and start to pull back, the market may indeed begin to soften for no real reason.

In the meantime, if you prefer to live in the real world, base your decisions on the facts that interest rates remain extremely low and show no signs of rising, demand is greater than supply, the U.S. economy is showing signs of life, we’ve already weathered some pretty bad storms and we live in a great city. In my opinion, the residential market in central Toronto should continue on its current course for at least the next 6 months to a year.