Winter hasn’t done anything to cool the region’s blazing real estate market. As the number of home listings continues to flag, re-sale prices soared 27.7 per cent across the Toronto area to $875,983 in February, compared to the same month last year.

The latest statistics from the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) show its benchmarked price index rose 23.8 per cent year over year last month.

January to February typically sees the biggest month to month price jump in the calendar. This February, home prices were up $105,238 over January.

Heated demand pushed detached home prices up 32 per cent across the region in February to $1.1 million.

In the city, the average cost of a detached home has crossed the $1.5-million mark, a 35 per cent increase over the same month last year.

The number of sales rose 5.7 per cent region-wide to 8,014 homes, up from 7,583 last February, which had another day in the month.

But the number of homes on the market dropped this year 12.5 per cent in the same period to 9,834, said TREB.

“TREB's average months of inventory trend for February was at one month, while in many neighbourhoods across the GTA, inventory can now be measured in weeks rather than months,” said a board news release on Friday.

With about half of homebuyers first-time consumers in the Toronto region, and an even higher percentage of first-timers in Toronto, condo sales also continued their double-digit increases – 19.2 per cent in the region with an average price of $481,194.

The greatest increase in high-rise sales was in Durham Region, which saw a 28 per cent increase.

TREB officials continued to push governments to consider policies aimed at increasing the supply of homes in the region, rather than focusing on cooling demand that is being fuelled by the region’s booming population, combined with relatively low interest rates and unemployment.

“Until we see a marked increase in the number of homes available for sale, expect very strong annual rates of price growth to continue,” said Jason Mercer, director of market analysis.

While many real estate industry experts say the region’s rising prices are typical of the world’s most successful cities, bank economists and CMHC have suggested Toronto’s housing market is dangerously overheated.

TREB’s news release also defended a recently released statistic showing that only 4.9 per cent of real estate transactions in the region involved a foreign buyer.

“There has also been much speculation, both in the media and among government policymakers, about the amount of foreign buying activity in the GTA. A recent Ipsos survey of the TREB membership on foreign buying activity suggests that the impact of foreign buyers in the GTA marketplace has been somewhat overblown,” said the release.

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