Millennials are buying more houses than usual in Toronto right now

Things may not look great in the long term for young Torontonians on the real estate market, but a period of relatively flat home prices has reportedly led to a recent spike in first-time detached home sales.

The Toronto-based real estate agent matching platform Fivewalls told mortgagebrokernews.ca this week that detached home sales are up by 23 per cent this summer, year over year, across the GTA, and that much of this can be attributed to first-time buyers.

"In terms of our customers, their thinking is detached home pricing flattened out, so they have gone for those instead of condos," said Fivewalls' director of operations Freda Lau to the real estate news site.

"Anything under $1 million, it's millennials and Gen Xers driving that market... for the price points under $1 million based on the housing affordability calculator, that sits at the price points where millennials can afford detached and semi-detached homes."

It's worth noting here that the data Fivewalls based its analysis on, sourced from the Toronto Real Estate Board, encompasses the entire GTA, from Milton to Oshawa and beyond. 

There's also the the fact that millennials are aging. By most professional definitions, this generation includes anyone born between the years 1980 and 2000.

This means that the oldest of the millennials are now approaching 40.

"They're hitting over $50,000, $60,000 per head, and as households that puts them over $100,000," said Konstantin Polyamov of Centum The Pocket Mortgage Inc. to Mortgage Broker News, referring to the salaries of young people with partners.

"They're maturing and able to qualify for properties of up to $1 million, but I haven't seen many millennials able to qualify for more than that."

Home sales have indeed been rising over the summer in Toronto. This is al starting to drive up prices after more than two years of intense "cooling."

It remains to be seen how much longer elder millennials will go for the dream of buying a house (in Caldeon or Scugog) as opposed to a condo in Toronto.

Those under 35 remain largely unable to purchase either type of property.

by Lauren O'Neil via blogTO