Halton Hills Housing Update - Ep.155

Hi, everyone! Welcome to this week's Halton Hills housing update. Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you all have a great day. The numbers this week are kind of interesting, so let's take a look.

In Georgetown, we had eleven sales, so we are definitely seeing some pretty consistent sales numbers. The market is definitely not dead. Eleven sales is a good week, and we’ve been seeing that pretty consistently for the past few weeks. Sales are definitely happening! We only had eight new listings in Georgetown, so that is not great news for inventory levels. I am still really surprised by these low listing numbers. So, the market is not going to change in a negative way until we start to see these numbers shift a bit.

In Acton this week, we had two sales and three new listings. So again, in the fall, Acton was a bit dead because Georgetown had such high inventory. In the past month, we have seen two to three sales every single week. In Acton, we're seeing new listings coming up, so there's definitely movement in Acton this week. In Glen Williams and Limehouse, there were no sales and no new listings. The rural market had no sales and two new listings. So, the rural market is still slow in terms of sales, but we are continuing to see inventory hitting the market in there. Something to note – of the 13 properties that sold in all of Halton Hills this week, nine of them were under a million dollars. So that lower price point is basically what is keeping the market going. The remaining four sales were between $1.1 and $1.3 million. So, that higher price point, which I continue to talk about being completely dead, continues to be dead. We're seeing some movement in that lower million range, but we are not seeing much movement over $1.4 million.

Now looking at active inventory, in all of Halton Hills, our inventory climbed very slightly from 109 active listings to 110. So, we didn't see a massive jump by any means. Things are staying very stable, but Georgetown did drop. We went from 67 down to 65 active listings, so things are definitely not climbing. In Georgetown, we still have buyer demand and the number of new listings isn’t keeping up with that demand. Therefore, our inventory is dropping. The under a million price point is definitely where we are seeing the most movement. Under $800,000 went from six active listings down to four. So, there's almost nothing available. $800,000 to a million went from 21 active listings down to 19. Inventory is dropping in this price point and we’re seeing lots of movement. One million to 1.5 million went up slightly from 21 to 22 active listings. $1.5 million plus climbed this week and went from 19 active listings to 20. Nothing is selling in this price point and it’s not a huge surprise that inventory is climbing here. There aren’t many buyers with these big ticket budgets anymore. So, as I mentioned before, under $1.25 million is still selling, and were seeing the odd thing between 1.25 and 1.4 million move too, but it’s very rare to see anything over 1.5 selling in our week to week reports.

In Acton this week, we are up from 14 active listings to 15, but that is not a crazy number of listings for Acton, especially when compared to where we were at the start of the year, which is good news for Acton sellers! In Glen Williams this week, we remained the same at five active listings. Something to note here – three of the five are under a million dollars. They are smaller bungalows but it’s surprising to me that they’re not moving. The other properties are two million and three and a half million dollars, so there’s a big gap there! But nothing is moving under that million in the Glen and it really surprises me. Limehouse remained the same at one active listing and the rural market is up from 22 to 24 active listings. This is definitely a market where inventory is starting to pile on. We are not seeing a ton of sales in the rural market and that purely, I think, because of the price point. We’ve been talking about this during the whole market update. The properties over $1.25 million are really not moving and only two rural properties are under that price point. Everything else is around $1.3 million and over, so that’s probably why we’re not seeing a ton of sales in the rural market right now. So, the numbers are really interesting. We are just not seeing the amount of inventory coming on the market, especially in Georgetown that I thought we were going to see. But, the fact that sales are still in the double digits every week is keeping that at bay. I do think we will look back on this year and January and February will be our best months of the year for a seller. I also believe that everything points in the direction that inventory should be climbing. We should see buyer demand sort of ease off once this initial rush of buyers get satisfied. I also think that the people that are waiting until the spring to list are going to hear that the market is actually doing really well right now. We're seeing multiple offers on certain products and we’re also seeing offer nights happening again on certain properties. I think some of the people that thought maybe they'd hold off till the spring might push their listings up to the next four to six weeks, and that might start climbing that inventory, but I don't know for sure.

So, it's pretty safe to say, based on all of the numbers that we've seen over the first six weeks of the year, I really think our under million buyers, the ones that can put less money down, are the most active price point. We're seeing a lot of movement but the majority of that movement is a million dollars and under. I do think it will remain the case and the properties that are listed just over a million will reduce their price to under a million. Just over a million is definitely still moving, but not at the same rate as under, again because of the amount of money you need to put down up front. I’ll be watching it closely though. If you are a seller who is thinking about selling now, especially in Georgetown, I do think now is an interesting time to put your home on the market. The market is pretty stable, and prices are coming down a little bit, but because of the demand, it’s not feeling crazy. So, if you do have a house to sell and you're going to do it this year, I recommend you try to get it on by the middle of March to try and capitalize on current inventory levels. If we follow the trend of last year, by the middle of April, our inventory was really piling on week to week. By May, it was insane and that really shifted our market. So, I think that pattern could happen again this year, so you want to get ahead of it. Anyway, I will be back next week! Have a great Valentine’s Day!