(Bloomberg) -- Toronto’s condo market showed more signs of cooling in October, as people sought more spacious accommodation outside the core of Canada’s biggest city with the coronavirus pandemic still raging.

Condominiums in Toronto’s central 416 area code were the only segment of its housing market to register a decline in the number of sales in October, falling 8.5% compared to the same month last year, according to data from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board.

Despite the sales drop for downtown condos, prices are still up from October 2019 levels, registering a slight 0.8% increase. In Toronto’s suburbs, where buyers can often afford a little more space, condo sales picked up 28% compared to last year and prices rose almost 7%, mirroring a pattern of more sales and higher prices for larger homes across the region.

Read more: Condo Listings Surge 215% in Signal of Downtown Toronto Weakness

“Suburban areas that once lagged desirable city addresses are now roaring hot as home-buyers wearied by lockdowns seek bigger yards and larger living spaces,” Robert Hogue, an economist with Royal Bank of Canada, wrote in a report last week. “Tight downtown condo markets that previously commanded expensive rents are now thick with supply. And the flow of immigrants that typically fuel demand for housing of all types has slowed to a trickle.

“In just months, the landscape of Canadian real estate has been shaken to its core.”

Looking Vulnerable

While Toronto residents are not unique in their pandemic-induced desire for more spacious accommodation -- rents from New York to San Francisco have been plunging even as U.S. developers find themselves unable to build homes in the surrounding suburbs fast enough --- Canada’s largest city is particularly vulnerable to fallout from this trend.

For much of the last 20 years, Toronto has been in the grips of a condo building boom. Home to more construction cranes than any other city in North America, its skyline has been transformed as strong immigration and a desire to live downtown drove prices for the apartment-style units ever higher.

But with both those drivers on hold during the pandemic, UBS Group AG recently warned Toronto’s housing market has the biggest bubble risk in North America. With unsold condo units piling up downtown, the worry is they could start to become a drag on other parts of the market, too.

While Toronto’s housing market overall continues to post impressive gains compared to last year, signs of a slowdown are starting to emerge. Average prices across all property types managed a slight 0.3% increase in October from September, when they posted an outright decline month-over-month. In both those months the total number of home sales fell compared to the month before, the TRREB data show.

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