5 Bullet Friday...Sudbury Hit Our New Construction Targets!

Welcome back Sudbury! 👋

Here are my 5 takeaways this week:



📉The listings just keep on dropping. With only 22 new listings this week and 34 sales, it's easy to see where the shortfall came from. Our back end of the MLS system that we as Realtors input listings into was down for 36 hours this week, so we were wondering if that was part of the reason that we saw fewer listings, but with the system being back and operating since Tuesday of this week, it would be easy to see those listings that were held off for a few days have ample time to get on the market. The anomaly here is that there is just very few ‘good’ listings on the market, there is a lot of homes that have been sitting, another group of homes that were on the market last year that were pulled off and have been put back on the market; but very few homes that are priced well and show great in this market.

🏡Just a follow up on the Laurentian President's house from last week. There were 4 offers on the property, and the Board of Directors have to sign off on whatever offer is being accepted. The lucky owner should know by mid next week they are the lucky buyer. I know a lot of people had some big plans of BnB, a personal heritage home, or really cool rental. I hope whoever ends up with the property maintains the charm and character of one of the most unique places in Sudbury.

💰We are in a very interesting financial position in Canada. Our inflation is dropping quicker than they are in the US as I highlighted last week, which is putting us in a good place where we should expect the Bank of Canada to initiate interest rate cuts very shortly. The big banks are still pricing in between 1-1.5% cuts this year. The difficult part is the US is singing a different tune, and they are saying that rates are staying the same for the next while and possibly even looking at rate increases to further cool their inflation.

📊I know this is my 5 thoughts on real estate, specifically in Sudbury; but what the heck is going on with Bitcoin? In the last 5 days, we hit a record high for BTC in Canadian Dollars (just before a bigger pull back). I followed the crypto and the NFT scene very closely back in the Covid rush, and feel like I learned a lot of lessons. We saw entire marketplaces (real estate, stock markets, and housing markets) going crazy when there was extra cash in the marketplaces from the government hand outs, so it's not hard to see why risky markets were pushed to all-time highs.  But if we look at the market now, sure the stock market is pushing all-time highs (I believe TSX high a high this week that we haven’t seen in a few years, while the S&P continues to hit highs it feels like on a weekly basis); housing is pretty tame still. We aren’t seeing a big push from small time landlords entering the marketplace to ‘try out’ being a landlord. If we see the stock market and alternatives markets continue to push higher, I do think we will see more landlords get back into the marketplace.  

🔨I read an interesting article this week about new construction targets, and how the 3 big cities in the North beat their targets for 2023. I was surprised to see that, as I know building permits are down. With increased rates, red tape and higher constructions costs, we have seen less new homes not more. But sure enough, we were one of 19 municipalities who exceeded their targets; in the North it was Sault Ste Marie, North Bay and us in Sudbury. In the Big Nickel, we didn’t just beat our target; we blew it out of the water at 156%! It wasn’t until I dug in further that the number of housing units is accounting for Senior housing apartments that have been recently completed, and if you follow my posts on this, you know I’ve referenced the number of new units for seniors has been at an all-time high. These types of units take years in the planning phase and even longer in the build stage. We will continue to be incentivized by our lofty building targets by the province who wants to see 1.5Million homes in the next few years, but be cautious when you read how successful we are as a community towards hitting our goals.  



That’s it for this week, let's connect next Friday for another Sudbury Market update!