Real estate activity in Nova Scotia took a nosedive during the early days of the pandemic, but surprisingly, there’s been a strong rebound.
Stats from the Nova Scotia Association of Realtors (NSAR) show residential sales activity, recorded through the MLS® System of the NSAR, numbered 1,428 units in June 2020. This was an increase of 10.4 per cent from June 2019 and was also a new sales record for the month of June.
The total dollar value of all residential home sales in June 2020 was $408.7 million, rising 21.6 per cent from the same month in 2019.
This was a new record for the month of June and was also the largest dollar value of homes sold for any month in history.
Nova Scotia Association of Realtors past president Matt Honsberger.
NSAR past president Matt Honsberger says July is also shaping up to be an exceptionally strong month province-wide.
An interesting pattern that realtors noticed during the pandemic period is that rural areas of the province experienced less of a downturn in sales.
“People who are maybe in denser populated areas are trying to find a little bit more space,” says Honsberger.
“It kind of makes sense if you were holed up over the past three months in a one-bedroom apartment, you might be interested in finding someplace that has a little bit more room to roam.”
He adds that it appears the normal spring market has been shifted into the summer a bit.
It’s yet to be determined what the fall will bring.
The average price of homes sold in June 2020 was $286,227, rising 10.1 per cent from June 2019. There were 1,769 new residential listings in June 2020. This was down 6.8 per cent on a year-over-year basis but marked a considerable rebound from levels in the previous two months.
Overall supply (of homes for sale) is running at the lowest levels in more than 15 years and continues to fall. Active residential listings numbered 4,398 units at the end of June. This was a large decline of 35.5 per cent from the end of June 2019.
There were 3.1 months of inventory at the end of June 2020, down from the 5.3 months recorded at the end of June 2019 and below the long-run average of eight months for this time of year. The number of months of inventory is the number of months it would take to sell current inventories at the current rate of sales activity.
Honsberger says people are working with their agents to try and find homes and are sometimes competing with five, 10, or 20 others for hot properties in Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM).
Sellers often end up with all the control because there are less of them and they can demand a little more.
Courtesy of the Canadian Real Estate Association
There’s not as much competition outside HRM but even in places like the Valley and South Shore, you’ll see competition for the good listings that come on,” he adds.
“That’s simply a measure of supply and demand. More buyers than sellers,” he says.
Courtesy of the Canadian Real Estate Association
Will the situation carry over to Spring?
“It’s really hard to look that far ahead right now. So much of it depends on what happens – any resurgence of COVID-19 and the impact on employment, for example,” says Honsberger.
“I would say at worst we would see a balancing of our market by next spring, where there’s the right number of buyers for the right number of houses.”
Three years ago, there were more sellers than buyers. Today, a property that sells for $300,000 might sell for $295,000 or for $350,000. That’s a big difference when you’re trying to get advice in terms of what to offer. Agents are doing their best to provide guidance, he says.
He sees the supply of homes catching up to the demand in the next six to 12 months.
Courtesy of the Canadian Real Estate Association
Honsberger shared that he is one of the many who started looking for a more rural property at the peak of COVID-19.
“We bought a cottage in the Valley because we really don’t see ourselves travelling for a few years and we have a young family, so the idea of sitting home all summer didn’t make a lot of sense to us.”
For them, daydreams of sunny days and a lake where the kids could run around, jump in for a swim or go kayaking, won out over sitting in a home next to the Armdale Rotary during social distancing protocols.
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.
