High-End Residential Sales Summary
More inventory and plenty of buyers
Prior to 2021, the record for the highest residential property sale – the $27.5 million sale of 11 & 15 Cathcart Road – stood for 10 years. From that 2010 sale through 2019, there were seven mega-high-end transactions (excluding land) above $20 million but none that hit or surpassed that high-water mark. However, between 2020 and 2022, there were 10 transactions above $20 million, four of which were sales between $30 and $37.6 million, with the latter setting a new residential record. Never has the market seen so much activity in this sliver of the market. And it wasn’t just the mega-high-end segment that boasted tremendous volume compared to historical norms.
High-end sales between $5 million and $10 million averaged 20 transactions during the 2012-2019 period. From 2020-2022, this average annual activity surged to 67 transactions measuring nearly $430 million in aggregate dollar volume. Ultra-high-end sales between $10 million and $20 million averaged between eight and nine transactions during the 2012-2019 timeframe but jumped to an average of 16 transactions during the last three years. With all of these $5 million + sales combined, approximately half of 2022 dollar volume stemmed from just 20 percent of transactions.
Before 2020, our team frequently discussed the pent-up demand in the high-end and ultra-high-end of the market. We noted how the number of transactions in the upper echelon of our market was likely artificially low since inventory isn’t often available. Buyers with a budget of $10 million and above were typically required to build what they wanted by acquiring land or undertaking a significant renovation project. This rendered the number of transactions lower than what might have been reflected if we could have compiled data for all high-end land sales and the corresponding value of construction contracts. This changed in 2020-2022 when more finished high-end properties than ever before became available and, as we predicted, there were plenty of buyers to secure them. Based on the strength in these sales through year’s-end, we anticipate this trend will continue for the foreseeable future.