Halton Hills Housing Update - Ep.152

Hi, everyone! Welcome to this week's Halton Hills housing update.

So, we had an extremely slow week last week and the numbers are a bit surprising. In Georgetown, we only had three sales last week. I do not remember the last time Georgetown only had three sales. Even over Christmas, the lowest we got was four. So, three sales in the middle of January really surprised me when I pulled that up this week. I don't really know what to make of that because the market feels like there's a lot of buyers. I’ve been hearing of multiple offer situations, and I had multiple offers on a listing a few weeks ago! So you’re hearing of this plus lots of showings on certain properties but then to only see three sales last week is pretty surprising. So we are going to be watching that because if buyers aren’t willng to pull the trigger and inventory continues to climb, it will really hurt where pricing is going to go.

Looking at new listings, we only seven new listings, which is a low number for last week in my opinion. I thought we’d be starting to see like 15 to 20 listings coming up. Historically January and February are not months that would see those numbers, but I thought that because we had so many properties come off the market in the fall, they’d be relisting now. Considering everything is fairly low, I do think the best price you’re going to get in 2023 will be in January and February. So, we will be watching these numbers closely, but this week was a big surprise. Something else to note here - last week, ten properties came off the market in Halton Hills and six of them didn't re-enter. It seems like the opposite time of year for us to be seeing this, so watching properties come off the market and not re-enter is a trend I’m going to be watching because it’s a confusing one. If it continues, it will also keep our inventory low.

In Acton this week there were two sales, which pretty good for Acton. They also had three new listings so the market is still moving. Nothing sold or listed in Glen Williams or Limehouse. In the rural market there were no sales but four new listings, which is a high week for rural. Again however, the rural market is one of the areas that we saw a lot of properties come off the market in the fall. So I think we will see inventory spike here but it will be a bit of a struggle to get sales here just because rural sales are tougher to come by when Georgetown and Acton have inventory for people to buy. I think inventory is going to continue to climb here though.

So looking at overall inventory, last week we were at 112 listings. In Halton Hills, we are now up to 116. This isn’t a major jump, and we would have had more if we had not seen so many come off the market. However, 116 is still pretty steady even though its not a crazy number for Halton Hills. It’s definitely not a number where we’re feeling a massive saturation of listings. So, I guess that’s good news for the overall market. In Georgetown, we went from 69 to 71 active listings, which again isn’t a huge jump. Georgetown has been slowly climbing like two to four listings a week but it’s still a pretty low number in comparison to the 130+ that we were seeing in the peak of last year. So, there isn’t a lot available and we’re not seeing as many listings coming on as I thought there would be given the climate of the market these days.

So, looking at our price points! Under $800,000 is up slightly from eight to nine active listings. $800,000 to a million is also up slightly from 16 to 17 active listings. This price point is definitely the one that’s moving. Out of the sales we had last week, two of the three were under a million and it’s just the pocket that moves the most. One to 1.5 million remained at 24 active listings. So, now looking at 1.5 million plus – it remained the same at 21 active listings but I kind of dove into this price point because it’s a tough spot to find a buyer in. It was definitely a price point last year that surprised us because the inventory we saw sell for over 1.5 million, were properties I never thought would get anywhere close to that, never mind two million on some others! So, there are nine homes over two million dollars. Of the nine, six of them are what I would consider to be subdivision homes. Oversized and bigger than a regular subdivision home for sure but still in a subdivision setting. Some got over two million last year, but there are still six people holding onto that pricing. There are six people who think they will find buyers willing to spend over two million on a subdivision home, and the reality is that it’s just not going to happen this year. That is a lot of money for a house that’s about 6ft from another house, so people are not adjusting their price, given what’s happening in the market. So, our inventory that is over 1.5 million are the homes that will sit on the market for six to nine months and then probably terminate if they do not adjust their pricing strategy. Anyway, I just felt like diving into that price point because I thought it was interesting to see what was available for 2 million. There are a few homes that are custom with bigger properties, and those definitely warrant a bigger price tag but the subdivision homes over two million – buyers just aren’t there. So, I digress, that was a lot to talk about on that one price point, but it's really just interesting to me that people are still holding on to what happened last year.

Anyways onto Acton. Acton this week is down slightly to 16 listings from 17, so that's been steadily dropping. Glen Williams remained the same this week at six active listings. Limehouse remained the same at one active listing. And where we saw a big jump was the rural market from 18 to 22 active listings. We are getting back up into that territory of 25 to 30 listings in the rural market, so we're just going to have to keep watching what’s going to happen here.

I am super surprised at how low the sales were this week. Only five sales in all of Halton Hills is extremely low and that is definitely a trend. I'm going to be watching closely because I feel like the buyers are here. I feel like there's a lot of pretty decent products, but our buyers are just not pulling the trigger. I don’t know though! I’m hearing of multiple offers and stuff happening, but these numbers are interesting. I will say, we have quite a bit in the sold conditional status so maybe we’re going to see a pattern of one week with high sales and then another week where everything is in the sold conditional status, and then it just continues. We are still two week away from seeing January’s full numbers, so I hope we can end January with stronger sales. So, I will be back next Tuesday, have a great week!