How Is The Real Estate Market?
With the real estate market being all over the news and social media lately, I have been getting many questions about how our local real estate market is doing. My answer is not as bad as you may be thinking. Below I break down what our current market has been up to.
As you probably already know, the market had been really heated the past few years with bidding wars on almost every property and most properties selling for over the asking price within a few days. With the rise of the interest rates, some buyers have stepped back while they wait for the dust to settle from these changes. This means that properties are starting to sit on the market a little bit longer and most are not receiving multiple offers. While this may seem like a bad thing as a seller, being back to a more balanced market can be a good thing for many reasons. In the heated market, we were seeing more buyer’s remorse with some buyers not closing on homes and more lawsuits from unhappy buyers who didn’t do a home inspection. This created a lot of extra stress for some sellers. Also, if you were selling and having to buy another home, there was a real lack of inventory to move to. If you did manage to find a home that you liked, you may have been outbid by another buyer. This made it really difficult to make a move.
As a buyer, this has been a welcome slow down. There are more homes coming on the market which means there is more choice and you likely will not be competing with other buyers for the home that you love. You can also usually get those conditions back in your offer to ensure that you can do your due diligence before you commit. You may even be able to make your offer conditional on the sale of your home which we have not seen for a little while.
What about prices? You may be seeing and hearing all kinds of things in regards to price drops in the market so I wanted to give you a break down of our local prices:
The benchmark price is actually up by 8.8% from this time last year. (These are September statistics as October statistics were not out yet at the time of writing). So why do you keep hearing about the prices being down so much? Prices are down from when they hit a high at the beginning of this year with the anticipation of the interest rates rising. Prices had increased significantly over a short period of time with this anticipation. The composite price is now down by 11.7% from 6 months ago so if you were looking to cash out at the top end of the market, then unfortunately yes we have dropped since then. If you are a buyer, this is welcome news. However, as I mentioned earlier, the composite price is still up by 8.8% from this time last year, 34.5% from 2 years ago and 83.2% from 5 years ago.
So is it a good time to buy or sell? Unfortunately I can't answer that for you as the best time to buy or sell depends on your personal circumstances. If you would like to know if it is the right time for you, I would be happy to discuss your situation. Please reach out with any questions that you may have.
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