Toronto's real estate market has been relatively dead in the water for some months compared to the city's usual red-hot reputation, but selling prices have remained incomprehensibly stable as more and more homes flood the market — and they're only set to go up, according to July's stats.

The year so far has been characterized by radical dips in sales numbers that saw investors losing money and developers putting new housing projects on ice (if they didn't go into receivership), with last month being the first time in a long time that buyers have perked up again.

Toronto is overrun with homes for sale that no one is buying because prices are still sky-high https://t.co/roZyJt8w1p

— blogTO (@blogTO) July 4, 2024

The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) says that 3.3 per cent more homes were sold over the course of the month than in July 2023. It's likely very welcome news for those in the industry, given that activity just two months earlier was down a staggering 21.7 per cent year-over-year, and condo sales in particular just hit a 27-year low.

Month-over-month, though, sales were actually marginally down, while the number of active listings shot up to 23,877, another bonkers high not seen in years — two factors that should be driving prices down, but aren't.

In fact, TRREB's experts write in their latest update that prices actually climbed ever so slightly from June to July along with this small bump in homes switching hands, and are expected to surge higher still in the months to come.

There are now more homes for sale in Toronto than there have been in over a decade https://t.co/1GUYcecnu2

— blogTO (@blogTO) July 12, 2024

This echoes other forecasts that express surety that this lengthy slump will not continue in the face of demand and lower interest rates.

"As more buyers take advantage of more affordable mortgage payments in the months ahead, they will benefit from the substantial build-up in inventory," the board's July 2024 report reads.

"This will initially keep home prices relatively flat. However, as inventory is absorbed, market conditions will tighten in the absence of a large-scale increase in home completions, ultimately leading to a resumption of price growth."

Home sales in the GTA are increasing slightly after months of stasis, but inventory levels are sky-high. Chart from TRREB.

While TRREB doesn't put a figure on it, other stakeholders project the price of the average home of any type in the GTA to jump to $1,235,630 by the fourth quarter of the year, from the $1,106,617 seen last month.