A new home goes up on Gianluca Avenue in Sarnia. The local real estate market remained strong in August, with a total sales volume of $86.7 million.
Pent-up demand because of pandemic restrictions in the spring, plus an ongoing shortage of listings, fuelled a strong August real estate market in the Sarnia area.
The Sarnia-Lambton Real Estate Board reported a total of $86.7 million in sales last month, which is up nearly 60 per cent from the same month the previous year. Year-to-date total real estate sales volume is up more than 10 per cent.
What the local market experienced in August “was just a continuation of what happened in July,” said board president Donna Mathewson.
Real estate was limited to essential sales in the early months of COVID-19 restrictions, but those limits eased in recent months.
July saw historically high real estate numbers locally when the market hit a monthly total sales volume of $88.7 million.
That followed a steep drops in local sales in April and May, but the numbers began to recover in June as buyers and sellers returned.
“We’re kind of making up for lost time,” Mathewson said.
Local demand for houses was already high, and the supply low, before the pandemic hit earlier this year.
“When real estate resumed in June, we had an even higher demand and low supply,” Mathewson said. “We had all those who would typically buy homes in February, March, April … now collectively buying with the people who would normally still be buying in June, July and August.”
That demand came as the supply of home listings remained low in the market, pushing home prices higher, she said.
The year-to-date average home price in the Sarnia area is $390,000, up about 16 per cent since the start of 2020.
Listings, year to date, are down nearly 16 per cent in 2020 while the total number of sales so far this year is 3.8 per cent lower than the previous year.
The higher sales volume numbers in August were once again influenced by a number of sales of more expensive homes in the local market. There were 14 homes sold in August at prices of $750,000 or more, including five that sold for more than $1 million.
“That helps drive up that volume,” Mathewson said.
Homes valued above $1 million in the Sarnia area tend to be waterfront or “estate-type” properties, she said.
Mathewson said she expects the high-demand, low-supply market to remain in the Sarnia area for the near future.
Buyers continue to have access to “historically low” interest rates, she said.
What’s unknown is what “a second row of COVID will bring, but for right now our market is very strong and it definitely is a great time for sellers to put their house on the market,” she said.
But, she added, real estate is cyclical.
“It transforms from a sellers’ market into a buyers’ market, one day,” Mathewson said. “It always, in the end, balances out.”
As of July, Sarnia had issued building permits for 32 single-family housing starts, which is on pace with last year’s home-building numbers in the city.
