After 7 interest rate hikes during 2022, the number of home sales in the GTA last month were almost half those recorded in December of 2021.

As for the average selling price, it was $1.05-million in December of 2022, down by 9.2 percent compared with December of 2021 when the average selling price was $1.16 million.

Paul Baron is the president of the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board.

He attributes the slump, which began in the spring of last year, to “aggressive” interest rate hikes that he said further hampered housing affordability.

Yet the year still ended with an overall average selling price of $1,189,850, up 8.6 per cent compared with $1,095,333 in 2021.