The popularity of Toronto’s leafy Little Italy and Trinity-Bellwoods neighbourhoods has helped those downtown pockets achieve the best quarter-over-quarter price increases in the Toronto area this year.Detached houses in those hip urban areas were up 17 per cent in the second quarter of the year averaging $1.88 million, compared to the first three months when they averaged $1.6 million, according to a Re/MAX report published Thursday.Across the Toronto region, with the exception of condos, year-over-year home prices have remained relatively flat, although they inched up 2.5 per cent overall in June, led by a 9.5 per cent increase in condos, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB).But traditional, detached houses have been making a quiet comeback, said Christopher Alexander, Re/MAX Integra’s executive vice-president and regional director. “The condo story was overshadowing a lot of the activity of single-family detached,” he said. “The fact remains that people who bought in the last seven years, prior to 2016-2017, gained a lot of equity and market conditions were easier for buyers to make decisions they felt comfortable with.”Read more: Toronto home prices finally inch up in JuneReal estate experts predict a return to normal for slumping GTA housing pricesCanada strikes back at Trump, and condo buyers will pay the priceWhen the frenzied buying hit the region in 2016 and continued through the first four months of 2017, “it was tough to be a buyer,” said Alexander. “Now it’s not as tough. You’ve got choices and you can make informed decisions better.”Re/MAX found that conditions this year are showing signs of a new normal that looks more like the pre-fevered market. That heated market sagged when the Ontario government launched its cooling measures, such as a foreign buyers tax in April 2017 and interest rates started rising as consumers were hit by tighter borrowing restrictions.Wed ...
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