Sarnia-Lambton Real Estate Board

The number of homes sold through the MLS® System of the Sarnia-Lambton Real Estate Board totaled 102 units in February 2023. This was a sharp decrease of 16.4% from February 2022.

Home sales were 15% below the five-year average and 11.5% below the 10-year average for the month of February.

On a year-to-date basis, home sales totaled 187 units over the first two months of the year. This was down by 7% (14 sales) from the same period in 2022.

“Home sales are still running below typical levels for this time of year despite a stronger influx of new supply coming onto the market,” said Rob Longo, President of the Sarnia-Lambton Real Estate Board. “In many other markets the issue has partially been a lack of supply – you can’t buy what isn’t there. However, although our market has a relatively healthy amount of inventory we’re not seeing an increase in buyers closing deals. Looking at the price side, even though we’ve come down from last year’s records we’re still trending at historically high levels, so some of the reluctance of buyers to rejoin the market may be due to a mismatch between sellers’ pricing expectations and what buyers are now willing to pay.”

The average price of homes sold in February 2023 was $487,089, a substantial decrease of 17.3% from February 2022.

The more comprehensive year-to-date average price was $486,357, a large decline of 14.6% from the first two months of 2022.

The dollar value of all home sales in February 2023 was $49.7 million, a substantial reduction of 30.9% from the same month in 2022.

The number of new listings saw an advance of 39.1% from February 2022. There were 185 new residential listings in February 2023. This was the largest number of new listings added in the month of February in more than five years.

New listings were 22.2% above the five-year average and 19.4% above the 10-year average for the month of February.

Active residential listings numbered 290 units on the market at the end of February, more than double the levels from a year earlier, increasing 326.5% from the end of February 2022. Active listings haven’t been this high in the month of February in more than five years.

Active listings were 64.6% above the five-year average and 9.6% above the 10-year average for the month of February.

Months of inventory numbered 2.8 at the end of February 2023, up from the 0.6 months recorded at the end of February 2022 and above the long-run average of 2.4 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.