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“We are in a period of flux that often follows major government policy announcements pointed at the housing market,” said board President Tim Syrianos in the statement.

Home sales in Canada’s largest city slid 37 per cent to 7,974 in June from the prior year, the third straight decline and the most since January 2009, the board said. Owners flooded the market with properties, with listings up 16 per cent to 19,614.

Average prices dropped 14 per cent in the last three months across the Toronto region to $793,915, reflecting fewer sales of large homes. That compares with a 1 per cent rise over the same period last year. Deals for single-family homes in Toronto and its surrounding regions fell 45 per cent and average prices dropped 12 per cent from April to $1.06 million.

Even with the slowdown, the average detached home is still above $1 million in the city and surrounding region, with prices up 7.8 per cent in June. The composite benchmark price, which reflects the cost of a typical home, rose 25 per cent in June from a year earlier, though it declined 1.3 percent on the month, the first drop since August 2014.

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“We could see a bit of a whipsaw like we saw in Vancouver where we’re experiencing a pullback now and a lot of those buyers move back into the marketplace over the next year or so,” Jason Mercer, director of market analysis at the real estate board, said Thursday at a briefing in Toronto. “If there’s not as much movement as we’d like to see on the listings front and the supply front, that could have implications for an accelerated pace of price growth.”