Home sales chill in Chatham-Kent under Freezing temperatures!

Residential sales activity recorded through the MLS® System of the Chatham-Kent Association of REALTORS® numbered 66 units in December 2017, down 18.5% on a year-over-year basis from last December’s record for the month. That said, it was roughly in line with both the five and 10-year averages for that month.

On an annual basis, home sales totalled 1,443 units for all of 2017, down just 1.6% (24 sales) from the all-time annual record in 2016. 2017 was the second best year on record for home sales in the region. “Two years of record level demand in the region have led to a record low number of listings left on the market,” said Steve Carroll, President of the Chatham-Kent Association of REALTORS®. “As a result of increased competition among buyers, prices, which have more or less tracked with inflation for decades, posted a double-digit gain in 2017.” The less volatile and more comprehensive average price for all of 2017 was $184,658, rising 13.1% from 2016.

New listings numbered 44 units in December, down 39.7% from the same month in 2016. This was the lowest level for the month in nearly three decades. There were just 198 active residential listings on the Association’s MLS® System at the end of December 2017. This was a record low for this time of year. There were just three months of inventory at the end of December 2017, down from the 3.3 months reported a year earlier and well 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.