NEWS RELEASE
BARRIE & DISTRICT ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS
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Residential property sales recorded through the Matrix System in the Barrie & District Association of Realtors® Inc. (BDAR) region numbered 263 units in February 2018, down 43.2 per cent from the record-smashing month of February in 2017.
On a year-to-date basis home sales totalled 482 units over the first two months of the year. This was a decrease of 33.2 per cent from the same period in 2017.
Within the City of Barrie, sales activity was down 45.9 per cent on a year-over-year basis in February 2018. The City of Barrie saw 139 residential sales in February 2018. A year- over-year decrease of 39.8 per cent was recorded in surrounding areas, where sales activity totalled 124 units.
“Sales activity remained at subdued levels in February, adding to evidence that some buyers moved up purchases in advance of the new mortgage stress test,” said Geoff Halford, 2018 BDAR President. “It could take a few more months for the sales levels to return to traditional levels. In the meantime, year-over-year comparisons will likely continue to be rather unflattering given how extreme the market was last year, particularly last March.”
The average price for all homes sold via the association’s MLS® System in February 2018 was $506,883, down 4.5 per cent from February 2017. The year-to-date average price edged down 0.1 per cent from January and February 2017 to reach $511,838.
The year-to-date average price figure for homes sold within the City of Barrie at this point in 2018 was $485,483. This was a decrease of 2.1 per cent compared to the average selling price in the first two months of 2017.
The year-to-date average price figure in surrounding areas up to this point in 2018 was $542,821, an increase of 2.2 per cent from 2017.
The dollar value of all home sales in February 2018 was $133 million, down 45.7 per cent from year-ago record levels.
New residential listings rose 10.6% from February 2017 to 595 units in February 2018.
Active residential listings on the association’s MLS® System numbered 938 units at the end of February 2018, rising 125.5 per cent from extreme lows last February, and roughly in line with the average of the last decade.
There were 3.6 months of inventory at the end of February 2018, up from just 0.9 months a year earlier but still below the long-run average for this time of year. The number of months of inventory is the number of months it would take to sell current inventories at the current rate of sales activity.
Sales of all property types in the Barrie region numbered 275 units in February 2018, down 44.4 per cent compared to February 2017. The total value of all properties sold in February 2018 was $146.2 million, down 42.8 per cent on a year-over-year basis.
The Barrie & District Association of Realtors® cautions that over a period of time, the use of average price information can be useful in establishing trends, but it does not indicate actual prices in widely divergent areas or account for price differentials between geographical areas. The prices reflected in this media release are based on residential detached homes sold via the BDAR MLS® system only.
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