Toronto Home Prices Fall for Seventh Month as Lending Tightens

Home sales fall compared with last month as supply widens
New stress-test rules could continue to influence market

Homes stand in this aerial photograph taken above Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Monday, Oct. 2, 2017. Toronto housing prices fell for a fourth month in September as sales remained sluggish, particularly in the detached-home segment that has borne the brunt of the correction in Canada's biggest city.Photographer: James MacDonald/Bloomberg

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By Natalie Wong and Erik Hertzberg

January 4, 2018 at 12:00 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Toronto’s housing market continues to cool as prices fell last month and the supply of homes for sale spiked ahead of new stress-test rules that went into effect this week.

The benchmark home price index fell in December for the seventh consecutive month, down 0.2 percent from November, according to data released Thursday by the Toronto Real Estate Board. The index has fallen 8.9 percent since May -- the largest seven-month decline in the history of data going back to 2000. The average price fell 3.5 percent from the previous month to C$735,021 ($586,000) and was up just 0.7 percent from a year earlier.