As multiple real estate markets across the country deal with a lack of housing inventory, Niagara region’s numbers are looking good, leaning towards a buyer’s market, according to real estate officials.
The report from online real estate firm Zoocasa looked at the hottest buyers’ and sellers’ markets of spring 2023 across Canada, concluding despite the country having the lowest available housing inventory across all markets — 1.8 months of available inventory — some markets are tilting closer to a buyer’s market with more inventory than potential home buyers.
Niagara topped the list as one of the best markets in Canada with a sales-to-new-listings ratio (SNLR) of 42 per cent, an almost 50 per cent drop year-over-year from 2022, showing the region as a balanced market.
To be considered a buyer’s market, according to the report, the SNLR would have to be below 40 per cent, meaning more listings than buyers, denoting more options and ability to haggle conditions such as closing price.
Amy Layton, president of Niagara Association of Realtors, agreed stating Niagara is in a balanced market, where it benefits buyers and sellers to negotiate to come to terms on the sale of real estate.
“We’re headed into a balanced market, looking at sales, at this point, I’m looking at it month-over-month, this time last year, we started to change about May and June,” she said.
“We’re still seeing quite a gap because that craziness and much inflated prices happening at the beginning of the year.”
Layton said listings between March and April fell by about 70 listings, which includes all housing types.
She said despite some parts of the country seeing the lowest available market inventory of almost two months, Niagara is seeing more than double with 4.4 months of inventory.
“That just means if no more houses went on the market at all, it would take 4.4 months to sell what’s there right now,” she said.
“This time last year, it was a lot lower than at the beginning of 2022. We had a point where we had less than a month of inventory, which is tight.”
Layton is optimistic for buyers in a balanced market, because she said it allows for buyers to have more negotiations and sellers need to take buyers’ concerns into consideration more.
“Buyers have an opportunity to have conditions again in a balanced market,” she said.
“They can go in and make an offer with a condition of financing, home inspection, maybe having their lawyer look things over and that’s what we want.”
She said when it was a seller’s market, it was more like a competition for buyers.
“It gets to be like a game. Like, ‘I won, I was the highest bidder, I won,’ and if the house doesn’t appraise then we have a problem,” she said.
She explained if someone bid on a house for $810,000 and it was appraised for $50,000 less, the buyer must come up with the difference.
“The buyer will need to come up with the $60,000 difference or the seller needs to lower the price, if it turns out they’re getting a mortgage, which some people go in with cash, when they’re needing a mortgage, so, (that’s why) we like a balanced market,” she said.
“Everybody has the opportunity to put their best foot forward and have their conditions met, as it’s fairer and squarer.
“We’ve got a good strong market here in Niagara and the good thing is with everything else changing, it’s important to look at new listings and sales, that tells you the most, more than price,” she said.
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.
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