Newfoundlanders and Labradorians haven’t let the restrictions of a global pandemic stop them from buying and selling homes.
In fact, over the last two months the province recorded some of its strongest sales numbers in years, according to Bill Stirling, CEO of the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Realtors.
“We’ve just had the best July we’ve had in decades in terms of the number of sales across the province,” Stirling said.
“I’ve been in this role now for a little over five years and it’s the first time that I can feel some excitement and a little bit of a pulse in the marketplace.”
Stirling attributes the boom in sales to the tight lockdown under pandemic regulations in March and April, on top of a harsh winter that also kept people mostly inside after record snowfalls buried the province’s east coast in January.
The lack of sales through the lockdown months saw sales come roaring back as the province began to reopen, he said.
“We’re going to finish August with probably the best August we’ve had in five or six years,” Stirling said.
Further, Stirling believes the pandemic itself may have actually helped boost sales, where travel hesitant customers, travel bans throughout Canada and the closure of the Canada-United States border allowed people to sit on their money.
“Personally I think there’s a lot of people who would normally be spending their discretionary income on a trip down south, or a trip to Europe or a trip to Toronto to see a hockey game, none of which is happening,” he said.
“That discretionary money is finding its way into real estate and renovations and that sort of thing.”
Good prices, good buyers
Realtor Martin Byrne says 2020 will probably be his best sales year to date.
Byrne said most summers are generally a slow period for real estate but this summer is the busiest he’s been in 10 years.
Realtor Martin Byrne says 2020 will be his best year for sales to date. (Curtis Hicks/CBC)
“The number of sales have shot up. We were down 30 per cent to start off the year, I guess with lockdown and Snowmageddon,” Byrne said.
“We’re now down 10 per cent, but with taking into consideration the sales are actually up 16 per cent for the year over year and sales prices in St. John’s have actually risen for the first time in a long while.”
Both Byrne and Stirling said there’s a lot of movement from first-time home buyers right now, but all areas of the market are moving, including properties listed at over $1 million.
Both also say the province is a buyer’s market, and low interest rates are helping people make the decision to buy.
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.
