Although home sales in Waterloo Region took a step back in November, industry insiders say it’s simply a return to normalcy.
The Kitchener-Waterloo Association of Realtors says 425 homes were sold in its area last month, for an average price of $445,363.
The sale volume was slightly lower than was seen one month earlier and well below the level from the record-breaking November 2016, but still ahead of all other Novembers since 2009.
On the price front, the average sale value was slightly lower than the $454,398 figure seen in October. It was eight per cent higher than in November 2016, when the average sale price was $412,243.
Realtors’ association president James Craig said in a news release that the numbers suggest the area remains in a sellers’ market, although an influx of new listings is evening the playing field somewhat.
At the end of November, there were 740 active listings in the KWAR system – barely half of the traditional November listing level, but an increase of about 50 per cent over where it stood one year earlier.
A shortage of listings was regularly cited as the culprit behind the red-hot market seen locally in late 2016 and early 2017, when many homes were selling for above their asking price with no conditions attached to the purchase.
The Kitchener-Waterloo Association of Realtors handles residential real estate transactions for all of Waterloo Region, except for Cambridge and North Dumfries.
Those areas are handled by the Cambridge Association of Realtors, which says it saw 155 properties sold in November – an increase of nearly 10 per cent over one year earlier, and slightly fewer than were sold in October.
The average sale price was $440,749 – about five per cent lower than October’s, and 0.2 per cent lower than in November 2016.
For detached homes specifically, the average sale price in November was $478,089 in Cambridge and North Dumfries, and $515,721 in the rest of the region.
