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The pace of home sales in Grey Bruce picked up in December, but prices slipped a bit.
According to the OnePoint Association of Realtors, 116 units sold in the region last month, a substantial increase of 81.3 per cent over December 2023. The sales activity number was 13.7 per cent above the five-year average for the month, but still slightly below the longer-term 10-year trend (4.6% below).
Prices dipped slightly. The realtors’ association says the average price of homes sold was just over $632,000. That’s a 5.7 per cent annual decline, and month-to-month it’s just over five per cent lower than the number the region posted in November ($668,000).
The more comprehensive year-to-date average price was $652,448 — essentially unchanged from all of 2023 (0.9 per cent increase). The annual home sales volume number for 2024 was up significantly, however, over 2023. The realtors’ association says 2,478 units sold last year, a jump of 41.1 per cent over 2023.
“Sales activity marked a rapid and significant recovery throughout 2024, boosting annual totals well above where they stood in the previous two years and nearly getting back on par with 2021,” says OnePoint Association of Realtors President Bonnie Looby in a release. “An exceptional increase in activity was spurred by a resurgence in new listings, with motivated sellers responding in force to renewed optimism from buyers who were gradually easing back into the market. Although the local market is at present close to buyer’s territory with above-average levels of supply, momentum is moving in the right direction and we are looking ahead to a more active spring market.”
The composite benchmark home price for Grey Bruce last month was $569,200, up by 2.9 per cent from December 2023. On a monthly basis, it is slightly higher (around one per cent) than the benchmark price the region posted in November. ($563,900).
The benchmark price for single family homes was $577,500, a three per cent year-over-year increase. For townhouse/row units it was $478,500 (a year-over-year decline of 0.7 per cent) and for apartments it was $370,300 (slight 1.6 per cent annual increase).
The total dollar value of all home sales in December 2024 was $73.3-million, a substantial increase of 71 per cent from the same month in 2023.
The regional housing market continues to have ample supply, and new listings surged last month. RAGBOS says there were 1,055 active listings at the end of December, the most for the month in more than five years.
This as more than 177 new listings hit the market last month — the largest number for December in more than a decade.
One metric indicates the pace of Grey Bruce’s housing market is moving slower than the longer term trend for this time of year. RAGBOS says months of inventory numbered 9.1 at the end of December. That is well above the long-run average of 5.9 months for this time of year. The number of months of inventory is the number of months it would take to sell current inventories at the current rate of sales activity.
The OnePoint Association of Realtors provides monthly data on the Grey Bruce housing market. It is a new unified body of nearly 3,000 real estate professionals across Grey, Bruce, Huron, Perth, Wellington, Georgian Bay, Simcoe, Parry Sound, Haliburton and Muskoka.