It’s always difficult to forecast what will happen with the real estate market in February. Some years, like last year for instance, the spring market seems to get an early start and we as Realtors are off to the races before spring actually arrives. Some other years, like this year, February is much like a replay of January and the spring market seems a long way off. Although February wasn’t busy when you consider the amount of homes that were sold, the market conditions for people that actually bought and sold, were spring-like indeed. Could February bidding wars mean a hot spring market is on the way?
There were 142 MLS sales in the City of Guelph in February. That’s a decrease of 34% compared with super busy February 2017. The average sale price for Guelph residential properties was $476,710, a decrease of 1.8% compared with February last year. However, homes prices were up 1.6% year to date when compared with last year at this time. Although the number of transactions was down, the average days on market for Guelph sales was only 19 days and 53% of homes sold for full price or more! These spring-like market conditions were mostly due to the fact that the inventory of homes for sale was low. Motivated buyers found themselves competing for the few homes that came up in their price ranges. At the end of February there were only 223 active listings in the city which represented only 1.5 months worth of inventory. Unless we see a good influx of new listings, these market conditions will continue into the spring.
Buyers: Expect to see more listings come on the market in March but still not enough to satisfy demand. For this reason, there’s a good chance you’ll be in competition with other buyers. If this is the case don’t be shy about paying full price or even a little more. April, May and June will just be worse.
Sellers: Homes that show well and are priced correctly for the market should receive a lot of attention from buyers in March because the inventory is extremely low. Holding off offers for a week to properly expose your home to the market is a good selling strategy this time of year. Attracting multiple offers will get you top dollar!
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