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“Builders are not able to keep up with the demand for new housing,” said Bryan Tuckey, chief executive of BILD. “The product that builders are able to bring to the market is quickly purchased and prices for all types of new homes keep increasing as a result.”

Altus Group, which supplies the data for BILD, said 4,680 new homes sold in the GTA last month, an increase of seven per cent from a year ago.

Over the first four months of the year, 17,977 new homes were sold, an increase of 24 per cent from the same period a year earlier and 48 per cent above the 10-year average for the month.

“The supply of new homes, the number of homes available to buyers in builders’ inventories

at the end of the month, continued its unabated decline,” said BILD, in its release. Industry groups have complained that the new provincial rules do little to deal with the underlying problem in the market which they say is a lack of supply brought on by restrictive government rules.

In a decade of data, BILD and ALTUS Group said overall inventory has never dropped below 10,000 before it reached 9,387 new homes in April. A year ago, there were 21,056 new homes available for purchase in builders’ inventories.

Prices for available new multi-family homes, condo apartments in high-rise and mid-rise buildings and stacked townhomes, also shot up 24 per cent from a year ago. The average price of available units was $570,226 in April and $685 per square foot with average unit size 832 square feet.