Halton Hills Housing Update - Ep.201

Hi everyone, welcome to this week’s Halton Hills Housing Update. In Halton Hills last week, we had 13 total sales, which is our highest week since the start of October, which is promising news for the sellers out there. Looking at Georgetown, we had eight sales, which is a normal week. It’s good to see that things are picking back up, but it’s still not crazy high. It does show that the market isn’t dead though which it good to see. We also had seven new listings in Georgetown, so listings did not keep up with sales. I’ve been watching to see if any of the homes that came off the market last year would re-enter and we’re seeing the odd one trickle in, but there hasn’t been a huge influx. Buyer demand is also starting to pick up, so I think that the market will swing back in favour of sellers eventually, especially if we continue to see weeks like this.

In Acton this week, there were four sales which is another huge week for Acton. They’ve had nine sales in the last two weeks which is a TON of sales for Acton. They do have lower priced inventory available so a lot of people are looking there. You can get a detached house for under $800,000, so there are opportunities there that we don’t have in Georgetown right now. There were also only three new listings in Acton. Inventory is not keeping up here either. Glen Williams didn’t have any sales but did have one new listing which was actually a property that had come off the market last year. Limehouse had no sales and no new listings and the rural market had one sale and no new listings, which is interesting because we’ve been seeing a lot of new listings here over the last few months. Also, six of the 13 properties that sold in Halton Hills last week were over a million dollars, which is a big shift. I think this could be a week where we look back and think “ok this is when things really started to pick up and the market started to shift”. Six properties selling over a million dollars is great news for sellers! This week we also only had seven properties that were in the terminated category and of the seven, two relisted at the same price and five came off the market. It’s interesting that we didn’t see any properties drop their price, and this is the first week in a long time that this has been the case. It’s also interesting that only seven properties made adjustments when a few months ago, we were seeing 20-30 adjusting each week.

In all of Halton Hills, we are down from 112 active listings to 108. That is not a high number compared to where we came from, but it also isn’t low. Once we get under the 100 mark, it typically starts to get busy for sellers. So although we aren’t quite there yet, we are getting close. It’ll be interesting to see what the market does if sales start to pick up and inventory doesn’t rise. We could end up being in a very busy market. A warning to buyers though – all the sales we saw this week were under asking price, so there is still negotiating room right now but that will shift quickly if inventory doesn’t increase through February and March.

Georgetown was down this week from 58 to 55 active listings, which isn’t a lot of properties. This market is really starting to shift and we’re seeing demand going up, which could mean that prices will also go up if inventory doesn’t increase as well. It’s such a different conversation than we were having three months ago. Now looking at our price points, under $800,000 is up from 11 to 13 active listings. There are a boatload of condo townhouses available right now in this pocket that keep coming up, but these sellers are the people who are buying at a higher price point, which is why things have been moving. Eight hundred thousand to a million is down from 12 to nine active listings. That is really low for that pocket because it is our busiest and I think that the demand for houses in the Delrex area is going to go up. One to 1.5 million is the same this week at 23 active listings, which isn’t super high or super low. A few of the houses that sold this week were in this price point so it’s nice to see movement there and that normally happens when our lower price points also get busy. The big question here is what will happen in the next few months with inventory and will prices go up? So, 1.5 million plus is down from 12 to 10 active listings this week which is pretty low for this pocket. The houses in this price point are definitely inflated and there are still a lot of them who are holding on to the fact that their neighbour got two million dollars for their house two years ago. Some properties here are shifting back into the one to 1.5 pocket with price adjustments and others are exiting the market all together, but we will have to see what happens here when the Spring comes.

In Acton this week, we are down from 19 to 18 active listings. That is still decently high for Acton, but there does seem to be a lot of demand there right now. Glen Williams is up from five to six listings, which is pretty normal. Limehouse stayed the same at no listings and the rural market is down from 30 to 29 active listings. The rural market starts around 1.2-1.3 million, so you do need to have a bigger budget to be looking there, and that price point isn’t moving very much right now. I will say that whenever the market starts to soften in town, the rural market tends to follow, so we’ll see what happens there.

Overall, this is kind of exactly where I thought we were going to be landing by this point in January. There was a big question mark surrounding the 100+ properties that left the market last year though. The question of whether they’d come back in January or not and it looks likely they haven’t. Sales have picked up though and this was the highest sales week since October (and prior to that was the end of July), which is great news for sellers. If inventory continues to go down, I think buyers will definitely be in a worse position and we may start to see bidding wars come back and prices go up. I think there is still time to get a good deal though, so if you are a buyer, start looking! So, I will be back next Tuesday to see what happens during the last week of January. Have a great week!