While it’s definitely still a sellers’ market for home sales in Greater Sudbury, the situation is starting to level off, said the chair of the Greater Sudbury Real Estate Board.
Tyler Peroni is in his seventh year selling homes as a real estate agent. He is currently halfway through his term as chair of the board.
Currently, homes are selling, on average, about six per cent over asking price. The highest the average has hit in the past year has been about eight per cent, he said, although there are homes that have sold for much more than that over the asking price.
“The market has started to slow down a bit since March, but it’s still a huge sellers’ market,” said Peroni.
It’s still all about supply and demand, he said. There are too many people looking to buy the limited number of homes on the market. It has left potential home buyers in bidding wars. There have been instances where potential buyers have put in multiple offers on multiple homes and have walked away empty handed.
“We need a couple hundred listings to help balance things out,” he said.
From Jan. 1 to the end of July this year, there were 2,368 listings in Greater Sudbury with 1,925 sales.
Compared to last year, in the same time frame, there were 1,864 listings and 1,399 sales.
There are many factors why people are not selling their homes, Peroni said.
“There is no one answer, but what I have seen out there is the fear of what’s next,” Peroni said. “For someone who sells their home right now for $300,000, and they are looking to upgrade to a larger home, they are going to also be paying higher prices, and it’s mostly the fear of that unknown that is stopping them from listing.”
While the talk of the town right now is southern Ontario investors scooping up rental properties in Greater Sudbury and jacking up rent prices as a result, that’s not really the case with home sales, Peroni said.
“We estimate that only about 10 per cent of buyers do not live in Greater Sudbury, while the vast majority of buyers are local,” he said.
Nationally, home sales were down between May and June 2021, said the Canadian Real Estate Association. National home sales declined by 8.4 per cent on a month-over-month basis in June. It’s the third straight monthly slowdown since activity hit an all-time record in March.
However, on a year-over-year basis, the number of transactions in June 2021 was up 13.6 per cent.
Ontario is seeing an average year-over-year rate of price growth in the 30-per-cent range, said CREA.
“While there is still a lot of activity in many housing markets across Canada, things have noticeably calmed down in the last few months,” said Cliff Stevenson, chair of CREA. "There remains a shortage of supply in many parts of the country, but at least there isn’t the same level of competition among buyers we were seeing a few months ago.”
The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average home price was a little over $679,000 in June 2021, up 25.9 per cent from the same month last year. The national average price is also heavily influenced by sales in Greater Vancouver and the GTA, two of Canada’s most active and expensive housing markets. Excluding these two markets from calculations cuts more than $135,000 from the national average price.
