Halton Hills Housing Update - Ep.154

Hi, everyone! Welcome to this week's Halton Hills housing update. We have a lot to cover today, including January's year over year numbers.

So, January of 2022 was around the tipping point of the market going crazy last year. Our average price was $1,300,000. So, this year, January 2023, our average price is down over 26% year over year to $1,027,000. That’s a decrease of over $300,000 in terms of average price. A couple more things to note though, of the 37 properties that sold in January 2023, only two of them sold over $1,500,000. I have been talking a lot this month about how that price point is dead, and this stat just supports that. It is very hard to find a buyer who is willing to spend over $1,500,000 on a house right now. Another thing to note is that our detached average price last January was over $1,500,000, and this year we are down to $1,059,000. So that is almost 31% off of our detached listings. Agents are going to listing appointments and people are saying “I want what my neighbor got”, but these are tangible numbers that show just how much pricing has come down year over year. People also need to remember that January, February and March were the peak and prices were ridiculous! You will not get that price anymore! So that is kind of a snapshot as to where our pricing has gone. One last thing to note is that our average days on market last year was 10 days, and this year was 33. I would actually argue that it’s even longer than that because a lot of the properties that sold had terminated in the past, so the system doesn’t take into account the previous days on market from the times they were previously listed. So, we have a big change in average days on market too!

So, looking at what happened last week now, the end of January and beginning of February, Georgetown had 10 sales which is on trend for Georgetown. We also had 14 new listings, so quite a few. I’ve been waiting to see (not that I want it) the higher listings weeks, so I will be watching new listings as weeks go on because the more new listings we see, the more we see inventory pile on. We did have quite a few properties come off the market completely and not re-enter, so that helped keep inventory stable this week. Another thing to note is that in the sales we had in all of Halton Hills last week, half of them were between $1,000,000 and 1.4 million. That price point really died down for a bit but we are starting to see some movement happening which is interesting. We were really seeing the properties under a million move, and now people seem to be climatizing to where the market is and still making moves, which is good news for the sellers with houses listed over a million dollars.

Acton had two sales and four new listings, so things are continuing to move there. Glen Williams and Limehouse had no sales and no new listings. The rural market had no sales and one new listing.

So now, looking at active inventory, again, this is not skyrocketing at any point here. I feel like it's going to at some point, but right now it's just not happening. So, last week we were at 107 active listings in Halton Hills. This week we are only up to 109, which is not much of a jump. This week, Georgetown went from 66 to 67. So despite some properties coming off the market, it kept our inventory numbers almost the same. Looking at our price points, under $800,000 is down from seven to six active listings. Of those six, two are actually freehold properties, so we don’t really have many condos available in comparison to the last few weeks. $800,000 to a million took a huge jump from 16 active listings to 21. Lots of competition is starting to build here and it is the pocket that is moving the most. However, if we start to see inventory really pile here, we will start to feel a shift in demand. One million to 1.5 million took a big drop and went from 24 active listings to 21. As I mentioned before, almost half of the sales last week were in this pocket. It’s just interesting because that pocket was dead for a while. The demand hasn’t seemed to trickle into the 1.5 million plus price point though because it stayed the same at 19 active listings. That price point is just tricky because there are not a ton of buyers looking for higher ticket products right now.

Looking at our other markets, Acton is up from 13 to 14 active listings, so nothing crazy there. This is actually down quite a bit from where we started the year, as we were well into the 20s. Glen Williams is down from six to five active listings due to a termination. Limehouse remained the same at one, and the rural market is up slightly from 21 to 22 active listings.

So, we covered a lot today. Our January pricing, from where we came from last year, is obviously way down. We have been sitting between that million and 1.1 million in terms of our average price for a few months now, so that's staying pretty stable, and I think it's a good indicator of where our average price is going to be for a little bit. I do think the biggest question mark is really whether or not we are going to see a huge influx in inventory as we approach the spring. We still have a few months until the traditional spring market starts around April, but we are seeing some bidding wars start again! I had a client, and the house was way under listed, but we were one of 24 offers last week. The house did get $200,000 over what they listed at, and sure, if you list a million dollar house for $700,000, you’re probably going to generate multiple offers well over asking price. As we hear of these things happening though, I think some sellers may want to come back on the market who had previously thought the ship had sailed in terms of having any kind of demand for their property. So, those are January’s numbers! I thought we would be in a much higher inventory position than what we started the year with, but that is not the case. Maybe February will be the month that we start to see inventory pile on, but as of the first week, nothing crazy. So, I'll be back next Tuesday. Have a great week!