Toronto property prices are set to recover this year — potentially close to their 2017 peak — as buyers digest efforts to cool the market, according to the local real estate board.

The average selling price in Toronto and its surrounding suburbs will increase about 4 per cent to $820,000, the Toronto Real Estate Board predicted. That’s not far off a high of $822,587 reached in 2017. The number of sales will rise about 7 per cent to 83,000 this year, it said.

“The share of intending home buyers has increased,” the board’s president Garry Bhaura said in a statement Wednesday. Buyers who’d moved to the sidelines over the past year have adjusted to the new policies, including stricter lending requirements, and have “re-evaluated their positioning.”

While the forecast was positive, market conditions in January were mixed. Benchmark prices were still down 0.3 per cent to $761,800 compared with December, but activity appeared to be picking up. The number of sales rose 3.4 per cent from the previous month, according to board figures.

The forecast and latest figures indicate Canada’s biggest city may be stabilizing and set to recover more quickly than Vancouver, the nation’s most expensive property market. Earlier this week, the Pacific Coast city reported benchmark home prices fell the most in almost six years in January.