CORNWALL – While housing sales slumped as of the end of October, the average price of homes in the region continued an upward trend.
Statistics from the Cornwall and District Real Estate Board show 101 units were sold last month – down nearly 37 per cent from October 2021.
In a broader picture, the number of houses sold in the 10 months of this year (1,245) is a “substantial decrease” of 25 per cent from the same period last year, the board said.
Outside of the year to year stats, CREA President Troy Vaillancourt says the market bottomed out in August and it appears there has been “two successive rebounds” in September and October of monthly home sales.
Vaillancourt believes the market is still working out last year’s “record or near-record levels of activity” as people were looking to change their living arrangements in the thick of the pandemic.
He says it will only take time and if the Bank of Canada adjusts interest rates again to know if “this is the beginning of a stabilizing trend or just a blip in the data.”
Vaillancourt says it’s still a seller’s market “for the time being.”
The average home price as of the end of October is $431,572 – 21 per cent more than last year.
Roughly a quarter of the homes that sold in the region in October were in the $280,000-319,000 and the $400,000-439,000 brackets, according to Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data.
As for the amount of choice in homes for buyers, inventory is up but it’s far below the long term average. New listings were also down with 136 new ones in October – a 24 per cent drop from the same month in 2021.