August heats up! Edging towards sellers market

Residential sales activity recorded through the MLS® System of the Chatham-Kent Association of REALTORS® numbered 138 units in August 2015, edging up 1.5 per cent on a year-over-year basis. On a year-to-date basis home sales numbered 888 units, running 7.9 per cent ahead of the first eight months of 2014. This was the best figure since 2008. “Home sales activity continues to strengthen, with August posting the second best sales figure on record for the month after 2007,” said Jamie Winkler, President of the Chatham-Kent Association of REALTORS®. “With demand running ahead of supply, market balance is increasingly favourable to sellers. We may see that reflected in some larger price gains over the remainder of the year.”

The average price of homes sold in August 2015 was $157,776, down 0.6 per cent from August 2014. The less volatile year-to-date average sale price was $158,420, an increase of 2.4 per cent from 2014. New listings numbered 175 units in August, a decline of 19.4 per cent from the same month last year.

There were 605 active residential listings on the Association’s MLS® System at the end of August 2015. This was down 14.2 per cent from August 2014. There were 4.4 months of inventory at the end of August 2015, down from 5.2 months a year earlier and below the long-run average for this time of the 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.