Halton Hills Housing Update - Ep.186

Hi everyone! Welcome to this week's Halton Hills housing update. So, another horrible week for sales and a really high week for new listings. We all know what this is going to look like.

So, in Georgetown this week there were three sales which I thought was the lowest number ever, but it isn’t. The first week of January in 2022 there were two sales, but only 11 houses were for sale, so it’s really not the same! We had three sales this week but we have 120+ listings which is a huge gap. I’m going to consider this the lowest sales week I’ve ever seen because we had so many properties available and no one is buying them. There were also 16 new listings which isn’t as high as we’ve been seeing some weeks but it’s also not a low number. Our inventory is definitely on the rise.

Acton has three sales which is the same amount as Georgetown and that is just CRAZY! I don’t think that has ever happened. There were also 5 new listings in Acton, so properties are still moving. There is a lot available in the lower price points, including detached homes for under $700,000, so I’m not really surprised that things are still moving. Glen Williams had one sale and one new listing. Limehouse had one sale and no new listings. The rural market had one sale and six new listings and is just getting hammered with new listings.

Last week I talked about properties that terminate and re-enter the market and how I don’t include those in the new listing numbers since they are not new listings but rather listings that are adjusting their prices. What’s interesting this week though is that there were 19 properties that terminated and only three didn’t re-enter which is a lot less than past weeks. Fourteen of the 19 re-listed at a lower price so we’re definitely seeing a shift in terms of pricing.

So, looking at active inventory we have finally reached over 200 listings in all of Halton Hills. This is the first time in over three and a half years (since I’ve been doing these updates) that this has happened. The highest inventory I had seen was 193 active listings last July but this week we are up to 204 active listings in all of Halton Hills. Our system doesn’t even show over 200 listings so now I have to filter Georgetown separately from the rest of our markets just to see all of the listings. So 204 is officially the highest number I have ever seen. This is just really bad news for sellers and for pricing.

Georgetown is up this week from 110 active listings to 122. It’s not the highest we’ve seen here but we’re about 20 properties away from it being the highest. We still have room to grow in Georgetown and that will impact the overall market for sure. Looking at our active price points, under 800,000 is up from eight to twelve active listings and there are a lot of freehold properties available. $800,000 to a million is also up from 15 to 20 active listings which is another shift. This price point is normally lower because it moves the most but no one is buying in that pocket either which is a problem. One million to 1.5 million is at the highest I've ever seen. We were at 52 listings last week and we are up to 55 active listings this week. That is the highest I've ever seen in that price point. 1.5 million plus remained the same this week at 35 active listings. Good luck moving one of those! Inventory here has just been sitting and a lot of these properties have adjusted their price down.

Acton is up to 31 active listings which is the highest I’ve ever seen and that is up from 29. Glen Williams is down slightly from six to five and there isn’t a ton of stuff available here, which is typical even when inventory is high. Limehouse is down from four to three active listings and the rural market is up to 43 from 40 active listings. This is the highest I’ve ever seen in the rural market and there are so many properties available there.

The overall theme of this is just inventory is climbing at a very rapid rate and it's not slowing down. There are no indicators that this is going to slow down. At some point, obviously we're going to hit the high but I just don't know where that's going to fall and much like last October/ November, we started to see a lot of properties just come off the market because it was so bad and there were so few transactions happening that people were just pulling their house off the market because it was just dead. I suspect that this is going to be on the horizon in October and November and that's what's going to keep our inventory at some point from completely being out of control.

This week, only three left the market, but that's a number I'm going to be watching a lot of because that's sort of what keeps our inventory at bay, and without seeing a ton of that happening and all these new listings, it's just really bad. So, I think every seller out there needs to adjust expectations and just know that there are quite a few properties on the market and people have to sell so inevitably they're going to take lower offers than what they want and that's going to start to soften things. I'm watching this really closely. Next week I'm going to have September's numbers and they're going to be horrific. I don't even know if we've sold over 40 listings in September so we’ll see where pricing will fall.

I’ll be back next Tuesday, have a great week!