Halton Hills Housing Update - Ep. 170

Thursday Jun 08th, 2023

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Hi, everyone! Welcome to this week's Halton Hills housing update. Today I'm going to go over May's numbers, and some really interesting numbers from last week.

Let's dive right into what happened in May. So my prediction was that we were going to see our average price hit $1,200,000. We didn't quite make it there, but it's pretty darn close. In May of 2022, so May of last year, it was the month that really started to see inventory pile on and things sort of soften. In May of 2022, our average price was $1,269,000. In May of 2023, we are at $1,860,000. So, we are down six and a half percent since last year, but that gap is closing because in the past few months we have been anywhere from 15-23% down year over year. That’s telling me that prices are starting to go up again compared to last year. 

Another notable thing is the number of new listings. In May of 2022, we had 219 new listings. So again, that was the month where inventory really started to come on rapidly in May of 2023. This year we only had 149 listings come on the market in the month of May. We are down 32% in terms of new listings. So all of this sort of makes sense to the market that we're feeling because our inventory just is nowhere near where it was last year at this time. These numbers make total sense when you compare our current inventory level to where it was last year, especially with buyer demand being arguably stronger than it was back then as well. 


In April, our average price was under $1,100,000 and in March, it was slightly over $1,100,000. So to be up and close to that 1.2 mark, shows that our prices are really bouncing back. With the Bank of Canada's interest rate hike announcement yesterday, the market may change again. Everything we’ve been seeing in our market lately supports our average price being up and some of the sales we saw this month were almost in line with what we saw in the peak of 2022. I was honestly shocked to see some of the prices certain properties got. We're starting to see buyers come back out and lots of properties get $100,000 over asking again. It feels like we're right back. It's going to be really interesting. 

Now looking at this week, we had some interesting sales numbers. Last week I talked about how inventory was rising and guess what? It’s continuing to rise. In Georgetown last week, we had 15 sales. That is not super high, but is higher than our normal amount. We also had 28 new listings, which is a ton for Georgetown. If this continues, we are definitely going to see a shift back into a buyer’s market. It's going to take a little bit to get there because there is a backlog of buyer demand, but I do think if we start to see weeks with this much new inventory, things are definitely going to shift. 

In Acton this week, we had seven sales and five of them sold over asking. This is the second week in a row where Acton saw seven sales.There has been more sales in Acton the last two weeks than all the weeks prior in May and all of April. So, this is a crazy week in Acton again! Typically, when Georgetown's inventory is feeling low, Acton starts to pick up, but these last two weeks have been huge for Acton, and a couple of those properties sold over a million dollars. So, it's not just that lower price point that's moving in Acton right now. There were also eight new listings in Acton, so it was a pretty balanced week. Glen Williams had no sales and no new listings. Limehouse had one sale and no new listings. The rural market had three sales which is a big week there, and also had four new listings which is also high.

Looking at active inventory, last week we were at 120 active listings in Halton Hills. This week, we are up to 129. So, we were sitting between 100 and 105 active listings for what felt like months. In the last few weeks, things have started to pile on a bit and we're up to almost 130. I think this is a significant thing to note, because I think that this could be the start of inventory climb. Sales are still moving pretty rapidly, but at the pace that we're seeing new listings come up, at some point it will shift and I think we're getting close to that point. 

Georgetown this week went from 64 to 75 active listings, which is a massive jump in Georgetown. We haven't seen that number in a very long time. Looking at our price points, under 800,000 is up from seven to 12 active listings, so there is a lot available under 800,000. Something to note here though is that some of the smaller detached homes are starting to list at $799,000 and are holding off offers. It’s kind of skewing our price points quite a bit because there are a couple of properties under $800,000 that are for sure going to sell over it, but that's sort of the market that we're back in. 800 to a million actually went down from eleven to ten active listings. We are still very, very busy in that price point. One to 1.5 million is up from 17 to 22 active listings. That is getting high. It's nowhere near where we were, but comparatively that price point is starting to pile on stuff, as is the 1.5 million price point. So, 1.5 million went from 29 to 31 active listings. We are seeing a lot of stuff coming up and of those 31 listings, 16 of them are asking over two million. So, we have subdivision homes trying to get over two million again and it’s going to be interesting to see if we get back into the market where a subdivision home can actually get 2 million plus. So, there is a lot happening within our active price points, but there are a lot of people over the million mark putting their homes on the market now. There were actually quite a few properties this week that had tried to sell in the fall that re-entered and are already either sold or conditionally sold. So it's just a sign of the times!

Acton remained the same at 18 active listings this week and Glen Williams remained the same at five. In the Glen, there is one house sitting just under $1.2 million and then after that it jumps to $2.3. So, mostly high ticket stuff available in the Glen right now. Limehouse is down to two active listings and the rural market is down slightly to 29 active listings. We did have a couple of properties terminate and come off the market this week, so it sort of skewed our numbers.

Overall, May numbers are not a huge surprise. I definitely felt like we'd be closer to $1.2 million and I thought we might even hit $1.2 million, but we're pretty darn close. To only be down 6.5% from 2022 is also a bit surprising because it’s the first month where we’ve seen a gap less than double digits. In terms of our year over year numbers, it's getting very close to where we were last year.

The weekly numbers are also interesting because we are seeing a huge amount of inventory coming on and we've sort of been waiting for this. Everyone is now hearing about how busy the market is and so we are starting to see a lot of homes coming on the market. Another thing is that a lot of people are buying and trading up again, which is something that we felt halted for a bit. So, if our inventory rises again next week and then the week after that, I will put money that we are going to go into basically an inventory climb through the summer. I will be watching this closely because these numbers are going in the direction that they haven't been going in in months. So, I'll be back next Tuesday to see what happens in the first week of June. Have a great week everyone!

 


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