While it’s definitely still a sellers’ market for home sales in Greater Sudbury, the situation is starting to level off, said the chair of the Greater Sudbury Real Estate Board.
Tyler Peroni is in his seventh year selling homes as a real estate agent. He is currently halfway through his term as chair of the board.
Currently, homes are selling, on average, about six per cent over asking price. The highest the average has hit in the past year has been about eight per cent, he said, although there are homes that have sold for much more than that over the asking price.
“The market has started to slow down a bit since March, but it’s still a huge sellers’ market,” said Peroni.
It’s still all about supply and demand, he said. There are too many people looking to buy the limited number of homes on the market. It has left potential home buyers in bidding wars. There have been instances where potential buyers have put in multiple offers on multiple homes and have walked away empty handed.
“We need a couple hundred listings to help balance things out,” he said.
From Jan. 1 to the end of July this year, there were 2,368 listings in Greater Sudbury with 1,925 sales.
Compared to last year, in the same time frame, there were 1,864 listings and 1,399 sales.
There are many factors why people are not selling their homes, Peroni said.
“There is no one answer, but what I have seen out there is the fear of what’s next,” Peroni said. “For someone who sells their home right now for $300,000, and they are looking to upgrade to a larger home, they are going to also be paying higher prices, and it’s mostly the fear of that unknown that is stopping them from listing.”
While the talk of the town right now is southern Ontario investors scooping up rental properties in Greater Sudbury and jacking up rent prices as a result, that’s not really the case with home sales, Peroni said.
“We estimate that only about 10 per cent of buyers do not live in Greater Sudbury, while the vast majority of buyers are local,” he said.
Nationally, home sales were down between May and June 2021, said the Canadian Real Estate Association. National home sales declined by 8.4 per cent on a month-over-month basis in June. It’s the third straight monthly slowdown since activity hit an all-time record in March.
However, on a year-over-year basis, the number of transactions in June 2021 was up 13.6 per cent.
Ontario is seeing an average year-over-year rate of price growth in the 30-per-cent range, said CREA.
“While there is still a lot of activity in many housing markets across Canada, things have noticeably calmed down in the last few months,” said Cliff Stevenson, chair of CREA. “There remains a shortage of supply in many parts of the country, but at least there isn’t the same level of competition among buyers we were seeing a few months ago.”
The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average home price was a little over $679,000 in June 2021, up 25.9 per cent from the same month last year. The national average price is also heavily influenced by sales in Greater Vancouver and the GTA, two of Canada’s most active and expensive housing markets. Excluding these two markets from calculations cuts more than $135,000 from the national average price.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
