New Brunswick Had A Record-Breaking Month For Home Sales In May
New Brunswick had a record-breaking month for home sales in May, according to data from the Canadian Real Estate Association.
The data, based on houses sold through the MLS system, showed 1,124 units were sold in May, an increase of 24.6 per cent from the same month in 2018.
Approximately $216.8 million in residential real estate traded hands in May. The bulk of it was in Moncton ($87.4 million), followed by Fredericton ($67.6 million), Saint John ($48 million), and northern New Brunswick and Saint John River valley area ($13.7 million).
“From a provincial point of view, it’s very encouraging because it’s all of our marketplaces. The only diminished market place was the northern [part of the province] and it only diminished by -6.7 per cent year over year,” said Sheila Henry, president of the New Brunswick Real Estate Association.
Fredericton saw the largest year-over-year gain at 58.6 per cent, followed by Moncton at 23.7 per cent and Saint John at 11.6 per cent. Northern New Brunswick and the Saint John River valley region saw dips.
Henry said the overall spike was caused by buyers entering an already balanced market, where there was less supply and listings are selling faster. While new residential listings went up 6.8 per cent year-on-year at 1,943, active residential listings fell 17.5 per cent to 5,648 units since May 2018 – an 11-year low.
This led to the average price also reaching a record high of $192,848 last month. That’s 8.8 per cent higher than in May 2018.
“Over the last four years, what we’ve seen is the number of listings trending downwards and we do have what we still term a balanced market. So we still have buyers who are still interested in buying,” Henry said.
“We’re certainly past the time when the government’s [mortgage] stress test caused a little bit of an upturn in the market place so that people who may not have qualified then will likely be in a better position to qualify now. People also do know about that new qualification so it makes the buyers a little more savvy … that’s probably the primary reason.”
In addition, population growth is helping increase the number of buyers, Henry said.
“We are seeing more return of people coming to specific areas, whether back home from away, or coming back here to retire, and then, of course, we are seeing some immigrants – though not a huge group – who are buying at this point. It’s the beginning of that. And then there are folks who are coming in from the U.S.,” she said.
Henry says the conditions indicate that a change is coming in the market, with the time that it takes to sell an inventory of listings dropping to five months in May from 7.6 months the year before. The 10-year average is 8.7 months.
“Right now we’re still in a balanced market…But we’ve been in a balanced market in pretty much the whole province,” she said. “The days [of listings] in the market is declining…that’s what perhaps is giving a signal that the market is going to change from being balanced into, maybe a seller’s market.”
Henry said while she doesn’t know whether the market will stabilize, the conditions are encouraging.
“We would love to see it maintained as it is and steadily grow because we are looking of course for more economic growth. As we get that, that’s certainly going to bring people in,” she said.