5 Bullet Friday...Let's Talk About the Drop in Listings ??

Welcome back Sudbury! ??

Take a peak at the numbers from the last few weeks!

Here are my 5 takeaways this week:

??The market has been sliding, both prices and actives for the last few weeks now; but all of a sudden we saw a reversal with that trend in the last week of July.?Sales picked up to 51, matching numbers we saw back in May. Conditional deals really picked up and new listings dropped, pretty dramatically from the 60’s to 70’s we’ve seen week-by-week to the current 43.?Even average price point (mean and median) jumped pretty noticeably. I still believe the market is going to continue to cool down, but the drop in active listings may mean that the slide to find the bottom of the market (activity especially), may be close to the bottom.

??Conditional deals which were averaging high 20’s spiked big time this week to 36.?That shows that more buyers are jumping into deals with conditions built into their negotiation.?This is healthy for the market, as a healthy market will allow for buyers to put offers with conditions built into their purchase. This is a trend I am going to be watching moving forward, as I like where the numbers are headed this week.

??The drop in listings from 340 to 300 is pretty substantial and needs to get some attention. We’ve been over 300 listings since early June, and that number's been climbing all summer.?All of last year, we only had 6 weeks where we saw listings over 300 (October to early November), and then the trend came back down as we went into the winter market.?The two years prior, we never even came close to 300 active listings.?I was fully predicting and preparing myself to see listings spike towards 400 active homes this year - and potentially we still may head in that direction - but looking at the reversal in numbers this week, we may have had the last of the buyers who were rushing to take advantage of the ‘sellers market’. If we truly are headed in a direction with fewer listings as we see the seasonality play out in the market, I think the prices are going to level out a lot quicker than I initially thought they would, as the pull back in prices over the last few weeks has been noticeable.

??The finance minister took the stage to make a big announcement this week about 30 year mortgages.?It was really just a press release photo opportunity as they will only apply to new builds that are CMHC applicable (under 1 Million and less than 20% down).?Even most of the new builds in Sudbury are pushing in on a million bucks, (forget about finding cheeper homes down south). In addition to that, no builder in Sudbury will agree to you buying a brand new build with 5% down, they want min 20% and usually up front as a first deposit! That's why this most recent announcement will not affect the housing market one bit in Sudbury. ?

??The stock markets took a dive to end this week, and so did the bond markets. The average homeowner usually cares more about the bond markets than stock markets, as it's the Bond Markets that dictate the Fixed Mortgage rates.? Just a reminder, the Bank of Canada rate is what directly impacts the variable rates, and the bond markets directly influence the fixed rates. With the plunge the bond markets took this week, the Government of Canada 5 year bond just crashed below 3%; if we look back one year ago that was at 4.5%.?This should translate to lower fixed mortgages (3 and 5 year options) for new home buyers or those looking to renew their current mortgage (and were afraid of the massive increase in rates they were looking at just one year ago). This should actually stimulate the housing market. I don’t think it will push it back to crazy price increases, but it should help find a bottom on prices sooner than later. ?

As always, not financial advice; just a Sudbury Realtor trying to tell you what I see on the streets and how Micro and Marco economics should influence the Sudbury housing market.?Have a great week and we’ll chat with you next week!