Halifax Real Estate Market 2015 Year in Review
2015 - The Year in Real Estate
2015 was an interesting year in the real estate market in Halifax, with some signs of recovery for our market starting to show themselves. Although we are still about 20% off of our peak with respect to volume (number of homes sold in a year), we have seen a continued push higher in average price in Halifax from $269,572 in 2012 to $282,727 in 2015. This is a good sign for home owners showing a small but steady rise.
In addition to higher prices in 2015, we also saw slight movement back in the right direction with the number of sales. With approximately 60 more sales in HRM (MLS areas 1-40) than we saw in 2014, it marks the first time in 3 years that we've seen an increase in this area.
Some of the other indicators that analysts watch closely started to turn during the 3rd quarter of 2015 as well. One key is inventory - where we actually started to see numbers shrink on a weekly basis for about 6 weeks. Inventory has been a significant challenge for our market as of the last few years - with the active listing ballooning from an average of about 4000 at any given time up to almost 6000 at the peak this past year. The increased inventory coupled with a decrease in sales has meant that buyers have had more control during negotiations - and have more time to make decisions making the sellers feel like the process is much longer. A decrease in inventory will bring our market back to a more balanced position - and will make negotiations between buyers & sellers more equitable going into 2016.
Information & analysis credited to Royal LePage Atlantic