February 17, 2023

The January Numbers - Issue 348

The January numbers are out and to summarize, January was marginally better than December. That’s really not saying much.

However, the bright side of these numbers is that January, which is traditionally a slow month, was better than December and given the results so far in February I would say that we’ve turned the corner.

In the city of Guelph, the median sales price for all homes was $727,500, up 3.2% from December and down 23.5% year over year. That’s a significant decrease and again, not really unexpected, as we knew last year’s run up in prices wasn’t sustainable.

The same holds true for the number of sales. Up a healthy 30.6% January over December and down 34.7% year over year. The interesting number is in the inventory level. The number of listings taken in January was 157, up 118.1% over December and - here’s the surprise - down 21.9% year over year. What we had anticipated is that listings would have started to spike upwards as the year ended as sellers were supposed to bail out of the market before it crashed down.

Well, that didn’t pan out the way the bears in the market had planned.

What I believe we’re seeing is the market settling down and stabilizing into a balanced normal market. That is assuming anybody can use the word ‘normal’ in any context these days.

The market hasn’t crashed as many predicted or hoped for.

The average number of homes sold in the City of Guelph over the past 13 years is 140 sales and the number this past January was 99, approximately 70% of the 13 year average. Being off the average by 30% after a year of record sales kind of makes sense. Some of those sales in 2022 were likely buyers that were holding off but jumped into the market in fear of being priced out of the market.

When we look at the entire regional market, the story is much the same. Settling into a new level not quite balanced and still somewhat of a seller's market.

The economy as a whole continues to be strong. A record number of new jobs were created in January and inflation is dropping off slowly. It’s a bit of a cautious good news story. The challenge I see if this continues is that the Bank of Canada will see this economy as still being overstimulated and may be tempted to do yet another round of interest rate hikes.

The story to me is that the risk levels in the market have reduced significantly and as long as you are playing the long game, your downside is relatively small.

To see the January stats in more detail and with a neighbourhood breakdown, click the market report image below!

I’ve also received feedback from a few of our readers asking where the individual neighbourhood reports are. The MLS® system has made changes and the reports are no longer available the way we used to provide them. However, I think we have gone one step further in making access to all the sales data for the past 2 years available at our website soldinguelph.ca . If you want to see what is selling in your neighbourhood - or any neighbourhood - all you need to do is register on this site and as a member you will have access to the sales data that we Realtors have.

Check out soldinguelph.ca to see sales data and active listings that are up to date.

I’m off to the Keller Williams Family Reunion Conference this weekend in California and hope to bring back a ton of useful information. I’ll update you on what the experts are saying next week.

Enjoy the weekend.

Paul

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