Weekly Wrap Up...Sales Slow, Multiple Offers Remain High, New Listings Hit a Low

Living in Northern Ontario, we often get drawn into the Toronto and Southern Ontario news cycle. The flashy headlines of Toronto and Ottawa can seem like click-bait compared to our more calm and relaxed pace of life in Sudbury. This week, the media cycle has been taken away from Canada in general with all eyes on the US. With the shooting of Jacob Blake, and the subsequent chaos that includes rioters being killed by a vigilante, and the response by professional sports teams across all professional leagues; it was a week that I won’t soon forget. With the wrap up of the Republican National Convention and the live-time fact-checking; as divided as the US has seemed in the last few years it seems like the division is at an all-time high. 

When I look at Canadian politics, sure there are battle lines between the parties; and with Trudeau being sent to the ethics committee more times than I can remember, we definitely have our share of faults. Ultimately our government and our population still care for each other, and as a whole, we want to see what’s best for Canada and Canadians. We still have a lot of work do to when it comes to minorities' rights, from Native Americans to Black Lives, to all races, but its weeks like this that I’m extra proud to be a Canadian.  

Shifting to the real estate market locally, I’ve talked about a slow down coming for the last few weeks, and we saw the numbers trend in that direction a couple of weeks ago, with numbers reversing in my last weekly update. The week of August 21st to 27th, we saw sales slow back down, although the conditional deals, as well as multiple offers, were still quite high.  And the number of new listings were lower but strong considering families are putting their focus back to school as it's only a few days away.

Sales are back down again this week; even lower (by one sale) than when the numbers fell off the cliff a few weeks ago. The sales that are still happening are happening in a competitive environment, with lots of multiple offers. Looking thru the sales, there are a lot of them happening at the entry-level market price points, and the ones that are happening in the 600’s + (there were a decent number of them); are homes that are truly impressive.  

Conditional sales were high again this week, surprisingly high to what I was expecting. These are typically a snapshot to show how active the market is at a given time; and with 27 active deals in the last week, it is more active than I thought it would be. Looking at the listings that have offers on them; only 2 were homes that were listed in the last 7 days, with the majority being a few weeks old.

New listings hit a low we haven’t seen in a few months; although still larger than the # of firm sales. There is a noticeable slow down in showings and activity in general on a few of the listings that came out last week. There are a few explanations we may point to for the lower listings; families enjoying the last few weeks before school or a lot of people who were interested in selling may have got their house on the market earlier in the summer. Ultimately, for the market to continue to balance, we will need more listings to come out. My guess is the next pop in listings we will see will be after kids are back to school in September. 

I was surprised to see how many ‘luxury’ homes (premium-priced) sold this week. This can be different prices in different areas. Luxury in Chemmy may be at 600k, while luxury in Southend may be 800K. There were a number of bigger sales this week, and I was close with some of my buyers to getting involved with multiple offers on some of them. In the case of the ones that we came across, they offered something very unique that the market hadn’t seen in a long time; a really nice in-law suite for putting the parents downstairs and having built-in babysitters, or a beautiful pool backyard (the place on Jeanine I heard had 150k+ put into the landscaping). In all these cases, buyers were more than willing to pay for the WOW factor.

Almost 80% of sales this week that happened were under 400k. Now that is still a lot of money for Sudbury homes, so its understandable that more than the average is happening at that price point. With interest rates in the gutter (and the way the Canadian economy is looking, it's not going to get better any time soon. My guess is 2 years out before we see interest rates creep up); 350k is a price range that a lot of first-time buyers are looking in. First-time buyers are a huge positive indication of a healthy real estate marketplace, so maybe we can take this as an overall positive, but it is interesting to note. 

With the nights cooling off and August running out of days, it truly does feel like the Summer of 2020 is coming to an end. For a year that has seen so much chaos, this summer has been a shining star of positivity. However you have been enjoying your summer, I hope you continue to squeeze the last few ounces of joy out of it!

Until next week!