Monday, 11 July 2016

In 6 months, 800 homes are sold in WIDREB district

Only year with more sales reported was 2005

In London area, sales numbers represented the 3rd best month ever

By Mark Schadenberg
In a year with the Summer Olympics, you may hear the term often: ‘Records were made to be broken’.
In real estate in many area markets, that’s exactly the correct terminology this year.
Six months are in the books at the end of June . . . in the record books for total sales with 800 reported in total in the Woodstock-Ingersoll District (WIDREB) board area.
To put those concrete numbers in cement, we look back to the first 6 months of 2005 when Toyota announced it would be building a car assembly facility in Woodstock. That year started off rather slow, but after 6 months there were 829 sales and in June of 2005 there were 182 sales.
In June of 2016, the reported WIDREB sales total was 163. By comparison though, and in recent years, the sales in June of 2015 were 156, and only 121 in June of 2014 and also 2013, and just 112 in 2012.


The bar graph noting average sale prices is here, noting prices were actually slightly lower in 2015 and 2014, versus the 2 years previous.
I won’t post all the stats, but it’s interesting that some months lately have had a list-to-sale ratio higher than 100%, which means there are more houses selling than new listings hitting the market, and that fact obviously drives prices and demand upwards.
There are countless reasons why Oxford and Woodstock are great places to live.
In an upcoming post (later in July), I will write again about residential projects on the horizon, including a proposed townhouse complex at the corner of Finkle and Athalone at the site of the former Faithway Baptist Church.



LONDON & ST THOMAS BOARD
The benchmark in LSTAR is May of 2007 when 1,161 homes were sold. The June of 2016 is now the third highest one-month total ever at 1,133.
There are lots of reasons why, the LSTAR market is also on a roll and many of those thoughts are the same as WIDREB.
Average sale prices of detached homes and other date are also noted in the Free Press story.
Here’s a look at part of the London Free Press story.


()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
The bidding wars are having an effect on prices. The average year-to-date price of homes is $277,084, up 4.8 per cent from December 2015.
That’s a far cry from the red-hot markets in Toronto and Vancouver, but LSTAR president Stacey Evoy said the London market is far more stable in the long run so London buyers don’t have to be wary of a real estate bubble.
“Real estate is where to park your money right now.”
Mike Moffatt, an economist at Western University’s Ivey Business School, said low interest rates are a factor in the robust real estate market but there’s more to the story.
The low rates are combined with years of pent-up consumer demand from people who put off buying a home until conditions improved. Now that job data indicates a better economy, and growing job security, the housing market reflects that strength, Moffatt said
“It is sort of an indicator of the overall economy.”
The economy isn’t back to where it was 15 years ago, he said, but it is the best it has been in a long time. Moffatt said Southwestern Ontario has the strongest economy in Canada outside the Vancouver area.
“I certainly think it’s a real phenomenon,” he said of home sales, adding other communities in our region are experiencing the same “fantastic” surge.
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
Also in the city of London, the number of building permits for high-riser apartments and condominiums has mirrored the increase in home sales.
A LFP story this week, notes that 513 residential units building starts were recorded in June of 2015 as compared to 182 in June of ’15. Building of single-family homes also rose from 121 last year to 175 in June of 2016. The story is linked below.


LINKS:


Mark Schadenberg, Sales Representative
Senior Real Estate Specialist (SRES designation)
Royal LePage Triland Realty
Independently Owned & Operated, Brokerage



No comments:

Post a Comment