It was another big drop in the number of homes sold in Windsor-Essex for the month of December.
The latest monthly report from the Windsor-Essex County Association of Realtors indicates home sales are down 51.88 per cent throughout Windsor and Essex County compared to last December.
“We've had some shifting for sure happening in the marketplace,” said Dan Gemus, CEO and broker with the Dan Gemus Real Estate Team.
Altogether, 230 homes were sold across Windsor-Essex in December, compared to 478 home sales the year prior.
Gemus said both buyers and sellers are taking a pause to try and get a sense of how much more the market will trend downwards.
“I think we've come close to hitting the bottom of the drop. It's hard to say. I don't have a crystal ball, but I think I agree with the reports where we've hit kind of the bottom where it might come down a bit further in the first half of the year, but it'll start climbing back up in the second half as people kind of get a grasp on the interest rates,” he explained.
Gemus said they are expecting that trend for the remainder of 2023, and that price will drop a bit more in the first half of the year, with some economists forecasting a 3 per cent interest rate increase by the end of the year.
“If we look at the trends, Windsor-Essex has finally caught up to the national average price, which is sitting at about $630,000,” he said. “We were so low over the last 10 to 15 years, much lower than the average Canadian price. We finally caught up.”
The monthly report said there was a large decrease in homes sold from November 2022 to December 2022, with 101 less homes sold.
The average home sales price also dropped to the lowest of the year to $473,642 in December after sitting at $575,304 in 2022, a decrease of 17.67 per cent year-over-year.
“I think the key if you're looking to sell is to take a breath and understand that we are now going back to the old market, which is not a bad thing. It's actually a very good thing,” Gemus said. “I like to equate it to the beginning of COVID where everyone in the world shut down. Everyone panicked, not knowing what to do. No one bought or sold for a couple months, but then everyone had a grasp after that, and then started buying and selling again.
In the meantime, other realtors like Alex Mereby with Century 21 in LaSalle admit December is typically the lowest selling month of the year, telling CTV News Windsor he is confident sales and prices will pick up.
“People are on vacation, kids are off school, Christmas, New Year's people are traveling. So it definitely weighs on the market,” he said. “Three years from now, a house that was selling for $200,000 had sold last year for $500,000 and now it's selling for $450,000. So is that a drop? Absolutely not. We're still 100 per cent over what it was three years ago. We're not talking centuries, not even decades.
Mereby believes the latest figures indicate an adjustment from pandemic-era prices in the local market.
“The market drop is when you buy something for $200,000 and you'd sell it for $150,000 or $160,000. That is a drop. This is a drop from the overvaluation. That’s an adjustment if anything,” he said.
Mereby said he believes now is the time to buy or sell a home, confident housing prices will climb again with advancement on the new bridge, hospital and EV battery plant.
“This is a perfect opportunity to purchase a house I think in the next year or two years to come, there’s going to be huge demand and price will rise again,” he said.
