In the beginning of August Kitchener-Waterloo Association of Realtors released a regular report of July sales (2018) in the region of Waterloo. Before to go to numbers, I would like to mark general trends in our local residential real estate. At least how we can see them at this point, and what might be interested to the public.
Trend #1 is the dynamics of sales on the local real estate market is coming back to a more typical level (compared to years of 2016 and 2017). Trend #2 is that home prices not only remain steady, but also show an increase for some types of hosing. Sure, the second trend will give a happy feeling to home-sellers.
Now, what we can see in numbers. Residential sales in July 2018 were almost 17% down if to compare to July 2017. Here, I would like to break stats into segments – number of sold detached homes was 23.4% down, while number of sold condominium was 14% up. It shows that predilection of home buyers, slowly but surely changes into favour of smaller size housing and condo versus freehold.
The reason lies not only in financing (the smaller the more affordable). Modern buyer is getting younger, and do not need big living space. This tendency can be seen after 2009. More and more families with or without children try to balance life with a smarter management of their family budget. Buying a smaller home they can afford more enjoyment in travelling, hobby, socializing, etc. Buying a condo people are getting more free time that in case of owning a freehold would be spent for property and house maintenance and additional repair.
Average sale price went up 5.5%, and average home price is slightly above $480K. Just to see a wider picture, single detached homes were selling for an average price of $584,337 in July this year.
Here is a graph of 10-year comparison:
The full information of KWAR report can be read here.