February was a close repeat to what happened in January. Sales for the month were the lowest on our records dating back to 2011, while inventory remained low (lower than January infact), and average and median prices rose again, the highest we have seen in 9 months. While the average price for February 2023 was $270,000 lower than it was in 2022, active inventory was roughly the same, and the number of monthly sales were half of what they were a year ago.
The Big change really has to do with where the volume of sales are happening. The higher price points are just not moving the same as they were a year ago, which of course makes sense as the cost of home ownership has drastically changed over the last year with variable rate mortgages going from 1.5% - 6.5%. In February 2022 sales over $1.5m represented 37% (57 of 151) of all sales and sales under $1,000,000 represented 13% of all sales, where this February sales over $1.5m represented only 14% (11 of 79) of all sales and sales under $1,000,000 represented 33% of all sales.
Luckily for Newmarket & Aurora homeowners, we have continued to see very low MONTHS OF INVENTORY level relative to other York Region Communities, meaning that there is strong demand for homes in these areas and they are still considered to be Seller’s markets.
Does this mean we have bottomed out on prices, I’m not so sure yet. The lack of inventory is really what is holding up prices at this point, with very limited options for buyers to Choose from. For historical context, active listings at the end of February for 2018-2021 were the following:
2018 - 343
2019 - 291
2020 - 135
2021 - 142
Prices will only continue to rise if inventory remains tight, which I do not foresee happening as we enter the spring & summer months of 2023. Based on the conversations we are having with some local home owners, we are expecting a large surge of new listings coming to the market after March Break to give buyers more options to consider.
more to come in our monthly report!
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