Real estate market cools slightly

A new survey conducted for the Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA) finds that Ontarians feel housing affordability in the province is getting worse. The Housing Affordability in Ontario: Perceptions, Impacts and Solutions report found that 46 per cent of prospective home buyers under the age of 45 are looking at moving outside of the province to afford a home. More than half of aspiring buyers (56 per cent) are pessimistic about being able to buy a home in the community where they want to live.
Meanwhile, residential sales in the Southern Georgian Bay region cooled slightly in June. There were 564 sales recorded through the MLS system, down 12.7 per cent from June 2020, but still well above the historical averages. The decline was less pronounced in the western part of the area including Clearview, Collingwood, The Blue Mountains, Meaford, Grey Highlands and Wasaga Beach where June sales were off 8.9 per cent from last year but still nearly 16 per cent above the five-year average for the month.
Even with fewer units sold, the dollar value of all home sales in the Southern Georgian Bay region in June 2021 set a new all-time record for the month. The average home price in the western region last month was $862,239, up more than 32 per cent from June 2020.
According to Matthew Lidbetter, President of the Southern Georgian Bay Association of Realtors, home sales were down from year-ago levels but still recorded the third best June in history. He describes the situation as a cooling off from red-hot to merely hot. The supply side remains challenging with not enough new supply coming on to the market to meet the strong pace of demand. Overall supply levels are trending at rock bottom and as a result, competition among buyers continues to maintain a tight market.
June is traditionally a popular month for sellers to put their homes on the market. This year, the number of new listings declined sharply down 10.9 per cent from June 2020. There were 803 new residential listings in June, 2021, the lowest number of new listings for the month in more than a decade. There were 688 listings still for sale at the end of the month, the lowest level in more than thirty years.
Months of inventory, a measure of how long it would take to sell all current inventory at the current rate of sales activity currently sits at 1.2, down from 2.0 months last June, and well below the long-run average of 5 months for this time of year.