The president of the Sarnia-Lambton Real Estate Board says we're returning to a more "balanced market" locally.
Rob Longo said the market seems to be weathering the storm very well, compared to other areas in Ontario experiencing a more severe decline in sales as interest rates rise.
"We've been fortunate here locally," said Longo. "We haven't seen as big of a shift as a lot of the other areas in the GTA [Greater Toronto Area], but we certainly have seen a bit of a slowdown. The number of new listings is up significantly and our number of sales and dollar volume is down slightly over last year."
There were 214 new listings in October, a 28 per cent increase from the same month in 2021, and only 128 sales, which was down almost 17 per cent, compared to the previous October.
"Really the best way that we can look at it is, we're sitting probably at about 2017 to 2018 numbers. Things aren't, obviously, as busy as they have been over the past two or three years, with the craziness, but we're sort of just back to those pre-pandemic numbers at this point."
The boost in listings means the market is no longer favouring sellers.
"We haven't had this many listings in October for about five or six years, and we think that's a good thing," said Longo. "There's more selection for the buyers, a little bit easier on both buyers and sellers, we've really returned to what we would call a balanced market now that we've just sort of hit, in October, three months of inventory. That's kind of the magic number that moves us out of that buyers market into a more balanced trading market. Which, I think, is a good thing for everybody."
The average sales price was just over $470,000 last month, but is nearly $547,000 through the first ten months of the year.
"The average price has slipped a little bit, but it's important to keep in mind, we are still up, significantly, double digits year-over-year from last year."
While more time is being taken to conduct inspections and review conditions, Longo said there are still instances where some properties are receiving multiple offers.
"The big adjustment that everyone's having to deal with, buyers and sellers, is timing. So, things are now taking 21 days, on average, to sell. Obviously, that's up significantly from the seven to eight days that we were seeing last year and the year before. But, that's not necessarily a bad thing and it's not necessarily a long time frame when you start to think in terms of selling a home, or purchasing a home. Three weeks is more than a reasonable amount of time in order to put your house up for sale and sell it."
In October, Longo said homes were selling for 97 per cent of their asking price.
The sales volume was just over $60 million, down almost 19 per cent from the same month last year, and volume sales for the year reached over $733 million.
