In a sign that the Toronto area real estate market is in recovery mode, year-over-year resale home prices and sales rose for a second consecutive month in July.

Selling prices climbed 4.8 per cent to $782,129 last month, up from $745,971 in the same period last year, for all types of homes in the region, according to the latest numbers from the Toronto Real Estate Board released Friday.

The number of home sales also rose 18.6 per cent year over year in July, while new listings declined 1.8 per cent.

“It appears that some people who initially moved to the sidelines due to the psychological impact of the (Ontario) Fair Housing Plan and changes to mortgage lending guidelines have re-entered the market,” said Jason Mercer, the board’s director of market analysis.

July was the fifth consecutive month-to-month rise in Toronto region housing prices: up 3.1 per cent from June, according to the real estate industry’s Multiple Listing Service Home Price Index.

Condominiums continued to outperform lowrise housing such as detached, semi-detached and town homes. Condo prices rose 8.9 per cent on average last month to $546,984. About three-quarters of the 2,002 condos sold last month were in the city of Toronto.

Of the 2,390 detached houses that sold in the region, three-quarters were outside the city. Regionwide, detached house prices rose only 0.5 per cent on average to $1 million, but the scarcity helped increase prices 3.6 per cent inside the city, while they remained flat in the surrounding 905 communities. A detached house in Toronto cost $1.35 million on average, compared to $907,347 in the surrounding regions.

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The lift in resale home numbers so far this summer — June prices and sales both rose about 2 per cent above 2017 levels — appears to signal the stronger second half of this year that the real estate board and industry executives have been predicting.

The real estate industry’s MLS Home Price Index showed a slight 0.59 per cent decline in July, but the board’s release said, “The annual growth rate looks to be trending toward positive territory in the near future.”

Seasonally adjusted figures, nevertheless, also showed year-over-year growth of 3.1 per cent in prices and 6.6 per cent in the number of home transactions.

The MLS index shows that York Region continued to lag other parts of the Toronto area with a 9.06 per cent year-over-year drop in all types of housing, including condos. The city of Toronto saw a 3.85 per cent price gain, according to the same index.

The average indexed home price across the region this year to date is $788,822 compared to $856,677 in the first half of 2017 when the market peaked. The Ontario government introduced its housing plan April 20, 2017, to pour cold water on months of double-digit price gains.

That policy was followed by tighter lending restrictions that reduced the spending capacity of many consumers, and a series of interest rate hikes, although lending rates remain at historically low levels.

There have been 46,834 sales this year, 13,520 fewer than the same period last year. The number of new listings was also down to 98,456 — 16,655 fewer than the first seven months of 2017.

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