Halton Hills Housing Update - Ep.156

Hi, everyone! Welcome to this week's Halton Hills housing update. So, the market remains in a pretty steady and stable state. Looking at Georgetown this week, there were only six sales, which is lower than what we’ve been seeing the last few weeks. There are a lot of properties in the sold conditional status though, so next week we could see something like 15 sales. The numbers are definitely delayed a bit because of conditions but six sales is definitely lower than what we have been seeing lately. We also only had ten new listings, which is more than the eight we had last week. The week prior though, we had 14, so we’re still seeing listings come on the market but not yet at a pace where our inventory is spiraling out of control. Another factor keeping inventory at bay is that properties continue to come off the market entirely, especially in the higher price point, mainly because they are not getting the results they had hoped for. So, last week we had four properties completely come off the market and have yet to re-enter, but it keeps our inventory in check when we have sales and properties coming off the market. Things just aren’t spiraling right now.

Looking in Acton, there was one sale and one new listing. Glen Williams had no sales, but it did have one new listing. There were no sales or no new listings in Limehouse and the rural market had one sale. One sale is good because it's been pretty quiet there, but there were three new listings. The rural market is getting hammered right now with listings. I don't know what's going on. However, I do know that because of the price point most rural properties are at and the lack of buyers in those upper price points, we're not seeing a ton of movement, but we are certainly seeing quite a bit of inventory coming onto the rural market.

So, looking at active inventory, all of Halton Hills is up slightly this week to 114 active listings and last week was 110. Four extra listings on our active listings is not a lot. There was a time around May and June where every week I felt like inventory was jumping 10-12 listings. So, to see four new listings is not that many, and with how much we have in the sold conditional status, I still think a lot of those are going to firm up this week and then inventory will still be balanced. We're just not seeing a spiral right now. So in Georgetown, we are up to 66 active listings from 65. Even though our new listings outpaced our sales, we aren’t up a lot because of the properties that came off last week. We have been staying pretty steady in terms of inventory. The update I did on January 10^th had 67 active listings in Georgetown, and six weeks later, we're at 66. This just shows that things are staying pretty stable right now. Our inventory has been the same. It took a bit of a jump from the mid 50s that first week of January to the January 10th week where we had 67 listings, but it's been staying pretty steady within four or five listings each week. It’s just really interesting that we just are not getting a ton of listings on the market right now. So, looking at our active price points, under $800,000 is up from four to seven active listings, which is quite a jump for that price point. The interesting thing we're seeing is people starting to hold off offers again. There was a listing in the $800,000 to a million range that re-listed at $699,000 in hope of generating interest. It's a really weird market right now, but that sort of thing is starting to happen. So, we're starting to see properties shift within our price brackets. Chances are they probably won't get the results that they're looking for and they will re-list next week back in the eight hundreds, but for now we're starting to see people test that holding off offer strategy again. $800,000 to a million is down slightly from 19 to 18 active listings because the one property went down to under $800,000. This price point is still sitting at very low inventory considering the demand we're seeing under a million dollars. One million to 1.5 million is also slightly down from 22 to 21 active listings. We had a couple of sales in the under 1.3 range last week so that price point is moving, but not as rapidly as under a million. 1.5 million plus is the same story as it has been these past few weeks. There were 20 active listings last week and there are 20 this week. Nothing is moving in this price point, and it’s a tricky pocket to find a buyer in.

Acton remained the same this week at 15 active listings, which is down quite a bit. When I was looking back at our numbers at the start of January, Acton was at 21 Active Listings. In December, we got up to 28 Active Listings in Acton. So, sitting at 15 is pretty good news for the sellers in Acton in comparison to where things came from. Glen Williams is up slightly to six active listings. Limehouse remained the same at one and the rural market keeps on climbing. There were 24 active listings last week, and we are up to 26 this week. Again, when I looked back at the start of the year, we were at 14 active listings in the rural market. We have seen almost no sales in the rural market this year and inventory just keeps coming up. So, seven weeks ago, we were at 14 active listings and now we are up to 26. The inventory here is typically in the higher price point and it’s not moving. It will be interesting to see how high the rural market inventory goes, but I think especially people really need to start re-evaluating their price points because the buyers just are not willing to spend what the rural properties are asking right now.

So, this week's market update is interesting because I kind of took a look back on where we came from six, seven weeks ago at the start of the year, and we have not really seen a dramatic change in our market. Things are very stable. If anything, I would say buyers are even more active than they were at the start of the year. Our rural market is the only one that is really in sort of a downward spiral, and that should, at some point, start to negatively impact the pricing there. Overall though, the market is super stable and I don't know when this is going to change. As buyers start to buy up properties, we might feel a shift in demand and that might do it. Listings should start to come on for the spring market, that might do it. But ,right now, I'm not really surprised to see that in February we didn't see a major downward spiral. I think it'll be April before we start to see that, just given how much demand we have out there. So, I actually won't be back next Tuesday. I am on vacation next week, and I won't really have access to doing my market update. So, I will be back in two weeks with February numbers and obviously a snapshot of what happens between now and that March update. So, I hope you all have a great end of February, and I'll be back in March. Have a great week!