Last year proved to be a record-setter for luxury residential sales in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and 2022 is looking like more of the same.

It's been a busy first quarter for luxury residential sales in the GTA, Sotheby's International Realty Canada reporting in its Spring 2022 State of Luxury Report that luxury sales have continued at an impressive pace after the market broke records in 2021 with a 224 per cent sales increase.

Overall home sales priced at over $4 million increased by 30 per cent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2022, with condominium sales in this price bracket increasing by 160 per cent and single-family homes by 24 per cent.

According to our Top-Tier Real Estate: Spring 2022 State of Luxury Report, residential sales in Canada’s largest luxury #realestate market continued to climb in the first quarter of 2022, following record-breaking performance in 2021: https://t.co/qz4YupXRfF #canadasir

— canada_sir (@Canada_SIR) April 13, 2022

But as sales increased for the majority of luxury residential real estate in the GTA, the top-tier of wealth, with homes priced over $10 million, recorded a decline in sales, with seven of these exclusive properties selling in Q1 2022 versus the nine sold in Q1 2021.

Within Toronto proper, there was a 29 per cent year-over-year spike in home transactions above the $4 million mark.

There was also a 72 per cent increase in home sales in the $1 million-plus condo market within the 416. Average home prices in the city are well above this mark, and it's getting harder to call these luxury homes, but $1 million is still well above the average 416 condo price of approximately $740K. GTA-wide, sales for this bracket of condos soared by 120 per cent.

Real estate experts are once again pointing to what Sotheby's calls a widening combination of "prospective buyers' insatiable demand and scant supply" fuelling bidding wars and rising prices.

According to Sotheby's, the 27.7 per cent year-over-year leap in average selling prices in the region of $1,334,544 in Feb. 2022 is only expected to continue in the coming months.

The rebound in sales and demand is being felt in major urban centres across Canada, with President and CEO of Sotheby's International Realty Canada, Don Kottick, saying that demand has left "no doubt that consumer and investor confidence in the downtown and urban market has been fully restored."

Acknowledging that there are many factors driving market strength, Kottick notes that the spike in luxury home sales "also reflects the stark imbalance between strong demand and inventory challenges we are seeing across the real estate market overall."