Halton Hills Housing Update - Ep.189

Thursday Oct 26th, 2023

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Hi everyone! Welcome to this week's Halton Hills housing update. So the market is not getting any better and the numbers aren’t looking great. Georgetown only had five sales this week which is a super low number when compared to the number of listings we have here right now. There were 15 new listings in Georgetown this week so inventory is going up and it feels like we’ve just had a flood of new listings each week. Our saving grace is that we still have houses terminating and not re-entering the market, which is balancing things just a little bit. Acton only had one sale this week which is lower than what we’ve been seeing. They have been pretty consistent because Acton typically has lower priced homes for sale. There were also seven new listings in Acton so inventory is up. Glen Williams and Limehouse had no sales and no new listings. The rural market had no sales and four new listings.

So, we only had six sales in all of Halton Hills last week which is absolutely awful! Buyers are at a standstill right now and if you are a seller, it’s just really hard to get any activity happening on your property. There were 26 new listings in Halton Hills last week and only eight of them were under $1,000,000, so the far majority of new listings are in a higher price point and those are the houses that aren’t moving as quickly. We also had 21 properties that came off the market last week. Of the 21, seven didn’t re-list which kept our inventory from completely skyrocketing. Eleven of the 21 came off and then re-listed at a lower price which is a trend we’ve been seeing lately, and most of them were in the million plus price point. We’re actually seeing a lot of price reductions and some have been as much as 100 to 200 thousand dollars lower, especially homes that are priced over 1.3 million. And then the last three of the 21 re-listed but stayed at the same price, likely to freshen up the listing and to move it to the top of the search on things like Realtor.ca. Price reductions and people taking their homes off the market is definitely the norm lately and it just has to do with the lack of buyers. I’m really interested to see what the average price for October will be because we haven’t seen a ton of sales this month. 

So, looking at active inventory now - this is probably the worst news of the update. Last week we were at 216 active listings in all of Halton Hills and this week we are up to 230. That’s a crazy high number compared to where we’ve been before. Our peak in 2022 was 193/194 ish and we are way past that. The difference between last year and this year is that at this time last year, our inventory was going back down. A lot of people were coming off the market and most didn’t NEED to sell. This year is the opposite where were seeing inventory just continue to rise week after week and I think it will have a massive impact on overall pricing but time will tell.

In Georgetown this week we are at 143 active listings which is up from 137 last week. I always thought we got into the 140s last year but I checked my notes and I can’t find the week where it happened so I think that 143 active listings this week is the highest we’ve had since January 2020 (when I started doing these updates). So, we are sitting extremely high in Georgetown. Looking at our price points now, under 800,000 is up from 14 to 15 active listings.That price point generally moves quite a bit but we have a ton of condo and condo townhomes for sale and again some detached in that price point, but just a lot of properties are available and not moving. Eight hundred thousand to one million is at 31 active listings which is the same amount as last week. It’s a bit of a bad sign that we’re not seeing any sales in this price point because it usually is the quickest to move because under a million, you don’t have to put 20% down and you can get an insured mortgage. One to 1.5 million is up from 61 to 62 active listings which is a massive number. This is the price point where we’re seeing a ton of price reductions and it feels nearly impossible to find a buyer in this pocket. We have to remember that only six of 200+ houses sold this week so the odds of you actually getting an offer and selling your house are very slim. So, 1.5 million plus is up from 32 to 35 active listings this week and I took a dive in to it because I’m really shocked by how many houses are in this pocket. So of the 35, 23 of them are subdivision houses. At no point is any one going to be spending this kind of money on a subdivision house in Georgetown South. Some of the homes in this price point are beautiful estate homes which make sense in this price point, but 23 regular subdivision homes is a lot and they’re probably going to have to reduce their prices at some point. 

Acton is up from 23 to 29 active listings this week. They have been back and forth a lot and it’s still a high number compared to where we’ve come from but it’s not the highest we’ve ever seen. If we start seeing only one sale per week here, we’re going to start to feel the pinch. Glen Williams remained the same at nine active listings, which is high for the Glen, but there's a huge range there. The lowest price is $769,000 so there are some detached homes you can get for under a million and then it goes up to over three million. There’s just a huge range in the Glen. Limehouse remained the same at three and the rural market continued to climb. It went from 44 to 46 active listings. Prior to the last few months, I don’t think we’d ever seen over 30 listings in the rural market. Normally we sit between 10 and 15 so to see 46 is nuts! 

Overall, it doesn't feel like the market has reached it’s peak and although it’s going in the direction I thought it would, I didn’t think it would go this high. The worst part is that it doesn’t feel like it’s stopping. Last year we started hovering between 180 and 190 and stayed there for a while but it felt like the peak. The difference this year is that it doesn’t feel like the peak. We are seeing huge price reductions and we are probably going to be down at least 10% this month, which is not a great story. So, I'll be back next week to see if we start to feel any kind of shift, but for now it’s definitely a buyer’s market and those buyers are not making many moves. Have a great week everyone! 


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