It's been about nine months since Toronto home sales started rising again after nearly two years of steadily sinking thanks to government cooling measures.

Now, just when the city's real estate market was heating back up to levels not seen since the record-breaking boom times of 2015 and 2016, sales are dropping - and sharply - on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Realtor and data analyst John Pasalis has started keeping weekly tabs on home sales and prices in the GTA as the market grows increasingly volatile in these unprecedented times.

His latest piece, published Tuesday, suggests that Toronto's real estate market "hit the brakes" in the last week of March 2020, even after posting significant year-over-year gains during the first three weeks of this month.

"When looking at how sales have changed this year compared to last year, we see that they have been up pretty much the entire year," writes Pasalis.

"They were up by roughly 50% during the first two weeks of March, during the third week sales were up 18% and last week sales finally hit the brakes and fell 37% over the previous year."

Pasalis notes that, when released, stats for March 2020 will still show an average sales increase of about 15 per cent, "suggesting the market is still booming."

"But that monthly figure masks the fact that sales during the past couple of weeks have been slowing down dramatically," he writes.