It turns out that high-end real estate buyers — those willing to spend $4 million-plus on property — aren't entirely immune to the foibles of the Toronto housing market.

But the super-luxury market hasn't suffered quite as badly as lower price points, according to the fall forecast being issued by Sotheby's International Realty Canada on Tuesday.

It predicts "a brisk and active top-tier real estate market" in the fall, despite a pervasive plunge in home sales volumes this summer.

"Toronto is to Canada what a combination of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are to the U.S.," said Sotheby’s CEO Brad Henderson.

"So many of the critical jobs that are in Canada are in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), it is a market that tends to go down the least and the slowest, and it tends to come back the fastest and the strongest," he said.

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Buyers who can afford homes priced north of $4 million tend not to be as sensitive to the macro-economic issues that affect housing.

But some have been standing back while they gauge the impact of a combination of factors — two increases to the central bank rate this summer; tighter lending rules in the last year and the Ontario Fair Housing policy that includes a foreign buyer tax, said Henderson.

All levels of government have been "tinkering" with the market but the measures aren't being co-ordinated, he said.

"No one's modeled what all these policies and initiatives will do to the market. They're all coming at it from their unique vantage point of their ability to influence the market," said Henderson.

Homes priced over $1 million — a common price point in the Toronto area — tumbled 44 per cent in the region and 37 per cent inside the city borders in July and August.

But the dive was less dramatic in the $4-million-plus category, where sales were down 34 per cent year-over-year in the areas surrounding the city and 33 per cent in Toronto.

The decline in sales volumes was expected but prices have held steady and Sotheby's expects the number of transactions to increase in the coming months.

"We don't know if it's going to go back up to record heights but we expect it to be quite healthy. Many people took their properties off the market in the late spring and summer because it was perceived to be a dead time, and we are already starting to see a fairly significant increase in the number of listings coming on the market in the fall," said Henderson.

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Sotheby's predicts that Montreal will come out as the surprise winner on the Canadian luxury property market this year. Sales of homes priced in the $1 million-plus range soared 60 per cent year-over-year this summer.

High-end Montreal neighbourhoods such as Westmount, Outremont and Town of Mount Royal experienced bidding wars and there are anecdotal reports of more foreign buying activity in that city, says the report.

While a sliver of that may be a reaction to foreign buyer taxes in Toronto and Vancouver, Henderson said Montreal attracts different buyers than those cities — fewer Chinese investors and more Europeans.