February 6, 2023 6:17am
The new year saw a lot of homes changing hands in Sarnia-Lambton, as 86 sales were made in January, for the highest January recorded in three years.
“We were a little bit surprised to see such a busy month in January but at the same time, based on what we saw at the tail end of last year, we kind of knew that was coming,” said President of the Sarnia-Lambton Real Estate Board Rob Longo.
The average price of homes sold last month was $483,903, down 10.3 per cent compared to January 2022.
Longo said now that prices and interest rates have settled, buyers and sellers are “comfortable” with the current market.
“All the new buyers that we’re seeing that are coming into the market right now are getting pre-approved at the current rates and they’re comfortable spending the current rates so therefore, they’re ready to move forward,” he said . “Same thing with the sellers that we’re dealing with. We’re seeing that the sellers obviously know what the evaluations are in the current market and are obviously still willing to sell.”
The number of listings continues to trend upward with 261 active listings at the start of 2023.
“What we’re seeing now is a lot more listings than what we’ve used for the last two years, but still significantly less — like less than half of what we would have seen from 2013 to 2015.”
Longo had previously said the local real estate market was expected to calm down in 2023. He said now they hope the market remains steady for the rest of the year.
“We’re expecting things locally to be steady or slightly on the upswing, similar to what we’ve seen sort of in the last three months of 2022 and in the first month of 2023 where the number of sales has picked up and the market has been very active locally,” he said. “That might be different on the national scale or in some of the bigger centers but around here, we think we have very strong fundamentals and we have a lot of good things to offer here in Sarnia-Lambton.”
The time frame for a home to be sold locally is holding steady at an average of 21 days. Homes are also selling, on average, for 96 per cent of their asking price.
