Halton Hills Housing Update - Ep.183

Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's Halton Hills housing update. So, today I have August numbers, which feel very skewed due to some high sales and I’ll also cover what happened last week and a trend I think is emerging. 

So, in August of this year, we only sold 40 houses which is extremely low for Halton Hills. Some months we see over 100, but we typically see between 80 and 90. So, 40 sales tells us that buyers are not very active right now. In August of 2022, when things were also feeling very slow, we had 58 sales. So, unit sales were down 30% year over year and down 25% since July. Last month we had 55 units sell, so it’s just further proof that buyers are not very active right now. The interesting thing though is the average price for August because it feels very skewed. I thought I was going to pull the results and we were going to be relatively stable to July, if not down. So, our average price in July was $1,229,000, which is actually up 6% year over year from $1,151,000 last August. There were four massive sales in Glen Williams that really pulled that price up and when I took those four properties out, our average price was $1,094,000, which felt a lot more on par with the downward trend we’ve been seeing. Our month over month numbers however are technically up year over year, and up since July. We’ve been hovering in the mid 1.1 million range for months now and I really felt like based on what I ws seeing in the numbers, we would be down from that. I don’t think sellers should be getting their expectations up that prices are coming back up because there were a couple rural sales over 2 million as well. So, six sales over two million is really random and rare and I don’t think it’s an indication of where the market is actually going. It did really pull our average price up though. So, without the two million dollar sales we are under 1.1 million average price which I feel is a lot more accurate, but obviously not the real numbers. So, we’re up in August but I don’t think that trend will continue.

Looking at Georgetown last week, we had eight sales which is a typical number for Georgetown. This is good because last week was a terrible week with only four sales. There were also nine new listings so we’re pretty balanced. Last week in all of Halton Hills, we did have six properties terminate, so we’re still seeing people leave the market which is stabilizing our inventory. In Acton last week there was one sale and three new listings. Glen Williams had one sale and no new listings. Limehouse had no sales or new listings and the rural market had no sales but two new listings. So, we’re definitely seeing low sales in all of our markets. In all of Halton Hills we only had 10 sales, which is a really low number. The only saving grace right now is that inventory hasn’t been piling on in terms of new listings and we are seeing properties come off the market. Last week we had 152 active listings and this week we have 153, so it’s very stable. And again, despite the fact that we had more listings than sales, the properties that are terminating are keeping it stable. 

For the third week in a row, Georgetown is at 92 active listings. It took a massive jump a few weeks ago and now it’s hovering which is interesting. I’m excited to see where September goes. A lot of agents seem to have properties coming soon so I do feel that at some point this month we may see a massive increase in listings. Looking at our price points, under $800,000 us down from eight to seven. 800 to a million is also down from 18 to 17 and this is pretty high for this pocket, considering it is usually our busiest. One to 1.5 million is up this week from 36 to 38 active listings. This is the price point that I really watch because when we have a ton of inventory here, it normally indicates that the market is pretty dead. We have gone up significantly because last week we had 38 and in May we had 14. That’s a big jump since May! We have basically tripled that number. In our highest peaks last year we sat between 50 and 53 in that price point. 1.5 million plus remained the same at 30 active listings. I’ve said this for months but these properties are just sitting and not much is moving. 

In Acton this week, inventory remained the same at 21 active listings. They’ve been hovering between 20 and 22 for months now. Glen Williams is down slightly from six to five active listings, so there’s not a ton available there. Limehouse stayed the same at three and the rural market is up from 30 to 32.

So, given the numbers we had in August, which includes the extremely low number of sales, I think that prices are going to go down in the back half of this year. When sellers start to feel like buyers aren’t offering on their homes, they start to panic and that’s when they take what they can get. So, we are going to see prices come down and I’m fairly positive of that. I’m just wondering when inventory is going to start to climb. Will it be September or October? I’m not really sure. I think that by the end of September our inventory levels will be in a very different place than they are now. We could be in the 180s by then. So, those were August numbers and my predictions for the back half of the year. I’ll be back next Tuesday and have a great week!