Hi, everyone! Welcome to this week's Halton Hills housing update.
So, we've got a whole slew of things to cover this week. It was another weird week last week with the numbers and I also have July numbers to report. They’re technically unofficial because it’s only August 1st but I had to do them today! Here we go. In July of 2023, which was last month, we had 55 units sell. Last year, we had 56 units sell, so we are pretty much on pace with last year. Our average price this year is $1,191,200 which is up 1% year over year. Last July, our average price was $1,179,000. So, we are very stable with where we were last July and the units sold and the prices are almost identical. What will be interesting to see is if we follow the same trend as last year where our prices go down from here. Looking at these numbers though, it wouldn’t be a surprise if that did happen. We had a strong start to the year and with the current interest rates, it makes sense that this will happen.
Now let's talk about what happened last week. In Georgetown we had eight sales which is kind of low for Georgetown, especially since we have a decent number of properties available for sale. It’s an indicator that buyers are not as active. We also only had eight new listings, which supports the fact that summer is normally a slower market. So, eight sales and eight new listings means that it’s a pretty balanced market in Georgetown. Acton had one sale and five new listings. Glen Williams had no sales and one new listing. Limehouse had no sales or listings and the rural market had one sale and six new listings. That’s a lot of new listings for the rural market.
So, now we’re going to talk about the weird thing that happened this week. When I look at the new listings, I factor in the properties that have expired, terminated, suspended, and then came back on the market. I take those out because those don't count as new listings. They either adjusted their price or re-listed to be at the top of Realtor.ca. So, if they were there last week and then came off and came back on, I don't count them as a new listing. When I looked at the numbers for this week, there were 23 properties that either terminated, expired, or suspended, which is a SUPER high amount. We were seeing this happen last year when the market started to change. We were seeing heavy amounts of listings that played with their pricing to see what would work in the market. I think they realized that holding off offers wasn’t working so they were re-listing because they weren’t getting the prices they wanted. I honestly can’t remember when I last saw this number of terminated properties. It’s extremely high. Of the 23 properties that came off, 13 of them did not re-enter the market, which means that despite there being more listings than sales, our inventory dropped because of these 13 properties. I think this is a really notable thing because it shows what our market is doing. They could come back on later this week but it’s definitely something I’ll be watching. I do think people will start to list their properties again when the market gets a bit busier, but right now they’re realizing that offer nights aren’t working and they aren’t getting the prices they want. To only have 10 sales in ALL of Halton Hills just shows how low buyer demand really is.
So, looking at active inventory, all of Halton Hills was at 141 last week. We're actually down to 137 active listings in all of Halton Hills this week which is not super high, but not as low as we’ve seen in the past. Georgetown is down from 74 to 67 active listings, so we are sitting with very low inventory in Georgetown. Our other markets seem to be struggling with sales but Georgetown has continued to see a good number, but properties are also coming off the market here and not re-entering. Under $800,000 remained the same at five active listings. $800,000 to a million is down from 15 to 13 active listings and this is our busiest pocket which is super low. One to 1.5 million is down from 25 to 21. This price point has been dropping the past few weeks which is really interesting because it was the price point that got super saturated last year when the market started to shift. 1.5 million plus went from 29 to 28 active listings. Again, that was due to terminations and not so much due to sales. That is pretty high for that price point but it is down from where it was about a month ago. Buyers are just not there right now despite having a six week “blip” where things started to move there. However, I think it’s fair to say that we are right back to that price point being dead.
So, looking at Acton this week, despite the numbers, Acton remained the same at 21 active listings. Last week, we had five new listings, but four properties came completely off the market and one sold in Acton, so the numbers are balanced there. Glen Williams is up from seven to eight active Listings. Limehouse remained the same at three and the rural market is up to 38 active listings. Last week we were at 36, which was the highest number I'd ever seen in the three years of market updates. I’m pretty convinced we are going to hit the 40 mark at some point because it is not slowing down there. People are trying to offload their rural properties and buyers are not interested.
So, it was an interesting week this week and we are pretty much in line with where we were in July of 2022. The big question here is whether or not we are going to follow last year’s trend of prices going down and sellers adjusting their expectations. Will that happen again at the end of August? I don’t know but I do think things are starting to soften a bit and the market is feeling quieter. Buyers are not quite as active as they were eight weeks ago but interest rates did go up. I think through the back half of this year, prices will go down but it terms of our week to week numbers, Georgetown is still moving along and could use more inventory. All the other markets are sitting pretty high and are not moving at a rapid pace. This week was just really interesting and I think there are some trends that are going to be interesting to watch.
Overall, our market is not completely dead and our prices have not tanked yet. If you are a seller, it probably is a good time to be thinking about selling your house before things go down even more, but we will see what happens! As inventory rises, prices will go down but with properties terminating, it’ll be interesting to see if that happens this year.
Anyway, have a great week everyone!
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