APRIL STATS

The first week of May is now officially in the books and it’s time to start analysing what the market has been doing and where we think it’s headed.  

Last week we talked about our frozen real estate market and promised a detailed breakdown on the City of Guelph neighbourhoods and how this market has played throughout the city — you can find those detailed reports below.

LAST WEEK IN THE GUELPH REAL ESTATE MARKET

26 properties were reported sold in the City of Guelph this past week.  That is down 44% from the 57 homes sold during the same week in 2019.  We are still well off the sales numbers we would normally expect to see this late into the spring market. The surprising number is that the median sales price is up 20% from the same period last year!  

Here’s what the median home looked like:

3 beds, 2 baths and 1,269 square feet; sold for $569,500 or $435.07/sqft and took 16 days to sell.  Sellers achieved 98.25% of their list price. Incredibly, 34.6% of the 26 sales reported this week sold at or above list. There are still buyers competing to get the home they need, and this indicates just how resilient our market has remained when you consider we’re still deep in this pandemic.  

Compared to the same week in 2019:

The median home was 3 beds, 2 baths and 1,261 square feet; sold for $474,500 or $385.16/sqft took 16 days. Sellers received 99.48% of their list price.  We reported 57 homes sold last year with 28, or 49%, selling at or above list.   

Our brokerage has prioritized working with what we call the essential sales and purchases these past 7 weeks.  We are now seeing the next wave of buyers and sellers that have been putting off their real estate decisions and now feel they need to move ahead with their plans.

At this point we are not expecting a massive inflow of people back to the market. What we are seeing is that people who put off their decision to buy or sell in February and March are now coming back to the market. We foresee this trickle steadily increasing as the province slowly re-opens the economy. 

Our brokerage and some of our competitors have now put into place protocols and safety measures that will allow us to further thaw market conditions and ramp up business.  

Let’s be clear.  It won’t be business as usual with public open houses indefinitely banned and restrictions on people gathering in groups. These conditions will take a lot of the real estate tourists out of the marketplace.  The people we will be viewing real estate with will be ready and able to put pen to paper. 

THE APRIL NUMBERS

We took a dive into the 18 neighbourhoods that make up the City of Guelph real estate market and discovered some interesting results.  

The neighbourhood with the smallest decline in sales for the month of April was Village by the Arboretum.  That area posted the same number of sales in April of 2020 as it did in 2019.  The Arboretum also enjoyed one of the shortest periods on the market at 12 days,  while price per square foot dropped by 3.5% to $357/sqft. We do preface this by saying that the Arboretum neighbourhood is one of the smallest, and is somewhat restricted.  The surprise here is that for an age-restricted community, there was still strong activity given that sellers and buyers in this neighbourhood are in some of the most susceptible demographics for COVID-19. 

Other neighbourhoods that out-performed the median home statistics in Guelph: 

The Riverside Park neighbourhood led sales price per square foot at $517/sqft, followed in second place by General Hospital neighbourhood coming in at $491/sqft.  Saint Patrick’s Ward with MetalWorks selling phase 3 and seeing some high-end resale units, placed 3rd with sales at $438/sqft.  Jump to Clairfields/Hanlon Park area at $435/sqft which was up 18.9% from April 2019. The Old University neighbourhood price per square foot was up 18.6% to $427/sqft and was our 5th place finisher.  You can see the rest of the numbers in the reports below.

Overall, prices have remained above the 2019 levels — which bodes well for a speedy recovery.  Guelph’s median days on market landed at 14 days and over 30% of homes sold in competition — this speaks volumes to the confidence that remains in Guelph and are real estate markets. 

For details on the Kitchener-Waterloo market, we’ve included a link to the monthly report published by the Kitchener Waterloo Association of Realtors.  Read it here.

The numbers for the balance of May look like they will continue to build as the economy slowly starts up again.  We’ll be keeping a close eye on future activity to determine how much of the damage to the economy will be permanent and what further impact there will have on the real estate market.  Still, these early days would point to a prognosis that the local real estate market will see a full recovery. 

Thanks for reading & Happy Mother’s Day — enjoy the weekend.

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SPOTLIGHT: Front Line Love

This local start up is helping our community show their support to our brave Canadian front line workers - from healthcare heroes, cleaning staff and first responders, to grocery store employees and delivery workers (and beyond) - with heartfelt lawn signs. Proceeds are donated to the United Way COVID-19 Community Response and Recovery Fund in your local area of purchase.

Signs are purchased online for $15, and thanks to a network of volunteers, your sign will be installed on your front lawn within a week! The program currently services Guelph the Tri-Cities, and Burlington (but if you want to see these in your community, sign up to become an ambassador on their website!).

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