Halton Hills Housing Update - Ep.198

Hi everyone! Welcome to the first Halton Hills housing update of 2024. I hope you all had a great holiday season.

So, let’s start by looking at December 2023 numbers vs December 2022 numbers. In December of 2022, we had 38 units sell and our average price was $1,092,000. This December, wasn’t great and that’s not very surprising. We saw very low sales, alot of listings coming off the market, and a lot of lower priced houses sold, but not much in the higher price points. So, in December of 2023, we had 26 units sell, which is down 31% from 2022. That might be the lowest number I’ve ever seen in one month. Our average price for December 2023 was only $920,000, which is down just under 16% year over year, and it was the lowest average price we saw in 2023. In 2022, October was the only month where our average price was under a million dollars in Halton Hills, and in 2023, December was the only month. Of the 26 units that sold in December, only eight of them sold over a million dollars, and only two sold over 1.2 million, with our highest sale being $1,425,000. The far majority of the properties that are selling right now are still under the million dollar mark, and that really brought our average price down this month. 

So, looking at the past two weeks, in Georgetown there were only five sales, which is extremely low considering I didn’t do an update last week and we are looking at a two week period. There were also only three new listings over the past two weeks, which isn’t very surprising because not many people want to list their homes during the holidays. Acton had two sales and three new listings, which is normal for one week in Acton, so for two weeks that is quiet. There were no sales or new listings in Glen Williams or Limehouse, and the rural market had two sales and two new listings. So, there was some movement in the rural market, but overall really low sales for the month of December. I’ve also mentioned the terminated, expired, and suspended listings every week, and this week there were 31 properties that fell into that category. Two of them relisted at the same price, four of them relisted at a lower price, and 25 of the 31 came off the market and have not relisted. So, you can imagine what that is going to do for our active inventory - and 25 is a huge number! 

So going into 2024, our active inventory in all of Halton Hills is at 112 active listings. This is a pretty low number compared to the 230 we saw at one point in October. So, fast forward two months and we are in very low territory at 112 active listings. Going into 2023 we had 100 active listings during my first update, so we aren’t far off from where we were. I think the difference is that it feels like sellers are exiting the market really rapidly right now, so I think that number will soften even more. 

Looking at Georgetown, we are going into the new year with 60 active listings. That is down from 78 before Christmas. So, we saw quite a reduction in inventory in Georgetown over the holidays. Sixty listings is very low and when we were very busy in May, we had about 56 active listings in Georgetown. We are very close to having those inventory levels again so it will be interesting to see what happens in the next few months. It feels crazy to think we could get to a point where we seeing bidding wars and holding offers again, but if inventory continues to decrease the way it has been, that might just happen. Sixty listings is way down from the 140 we had in October. Looking at our price points, under 800,000 is down from 17 to 11 active listings and only one of them is a freehold property. Ten of them are condo townhomes and condo apartments. Buyers may have missed the window on freehold if our inventory stays this low. Eight hundred thousand to a million is down from 21 to 16 active listings, which is relatively low. One to 1.5 million is down from 27 to 21 active listings and this is a price point where we are seeing a lot of properties exiting the market. There haven’t been a lot of sales over a million dollars, so that is not surprising to see. 1.5 million plus saw a pretty significant reduction, especially from where we've come from this year. So, 1.5 million plus is down from 17 to 12 active listings. The update I did this time last year had 20 active listings in that price point so we are definitely sitting under where we were. The sellers in this price point really need to consider reducing their prices because no one is paying that, especially for a subdivision home. Twelve listings in this price point is pretty low. 

Overall, Georgetown is sitting very low. The one to 1.5 million price point is still sitting kind of high, but not that high, and in all other price points we are sitting really low. If we don’t see some of the properties that came off the market in the past few weeks re-enter, we are going to be in an inventory situation. Our market will inevitably bounce back, but there aren't a lot of houses available. Acton is down from 21 to 18 active listings, which is kind of high for Acton but we were at 30 listings at one point so it’s not terribly high. Glen Williams is down slightly from

eight to seven active listings. There is one property listed at $700,000 and the rest are almost two million. There is definitely a big disparity in pricing in the Glen, so you need to have a bigger budget to be looking here. Limehouse has no active listings and the rural market is down from 29 to 27 active listings. This is a market where we are still seeing high inventory. Last year at this time, the rural market had 14 active listings, and this year it is 27. That is likely due to the fact that rural properties are typically a higher price because you get more land, and usually a bigger house. The rural market has definitely been a market that has struggled in terms of sales this year.

So, that's the first update of 2024. I think it's very interesting and I never would have guessed two or three months ago that this is the kind of update that I would be giving in terms of our active inventory. I'm not totally surprised at our December sales. These are the kinds of numbers I was expecting in October and November because it felt so desperate then and the inventory was so high and people were just not buying. But, the December update is definitely more reflective of the pricing that I felt like we were seeing and the number of units just going down. So, the biggest thing we're watching right now is if inventory comes back on the market and that starts to spike in the new year. If it doesn't, like I said, I think the buyers who were waiting for a deal or think prices are coming down, the ship might be sailing and we may start to see prices bounce back pretty significantly here because there's just not a lot of inventory. I think by next week we will start to see what the trend will be, but I do think it may be a busy Q1. I am still shocked at how low inventory is right now. So, I will be back next Tuesday, have a great week everyone!