OTTAWA, April 5 (Reuters) - Toronto home sales and prices surged in March, the Toronto Real Estate Board said on Wednesday, fueling fears of a bubble in Canada's largest city.
The industry group said the average home price rose 33.2 percent in March to C$916,567 ($684,823) from a year earlier, while sales increased 17.7 percent, and new listings climbed.
The federal government has repeatedly tightened mortgage lending rules to cool the nation's housing markets, but Toronto remains red-hot. Even mainstream Canadian economists have said a bubble is developing in that city.
Developers and other market observers expect the next attempt to cool the market will come from the province of Ontario, or perhaps the city of Toronto itself, probably in the form of a foreign buyers tax like the one Vancouver imposed in August.
($1 = 1.3384 Canadian dollars)