I love a good announcement - can't wait!
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Originally Posted by JHikka
Pretty amazing how quickly things changed from SJ being a buyers market to being a sellers market. Wasn't that long ago that you could snap up Uptown properties on the cheap.
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On that note, the SJ Real Estate Board has released their year-end numbers for 2020:
https://creastats.crea.ca/board/sjnb
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Saint John Real Estate Board MLS® home sales reach new annual record in 2020
The number of homes sold through the MLS® System of the Saint John Real Estate Board totaled 188 units in December 2020. This was a large increase of 56.7% from December 2019. This was also a new sales record for the month of December.
On an annual basis, home sales totaled a record 2,583 units over the course of 2020. This was an increase of 12.7% from the same period in 2019.
"Home sales in Saint John set a new December record by a mile. What’s more impressive is that in a year impacted by COVID we also managed to set a new annual record and broke through the 2,500 sales level for the first time in history," said Corey Breau, President of the Saint John Real Estate Board. "The market remained hot through the end of the year, with the pace of sales actually accelerating in December for that time of year. With not nearly enough listings coming onto the market to satiate this demand it’s no surprise that inventories are now at their lowest in more than 15 years. As a result of the tighter market, prices recorded a healthy gain of nearly 8 percent this year."
The average price of homes sold in December 2020 was $192,620, edging up 2.3% from December 2019.
The more comprehensive annual average price was $197,688, up 7.7% from all of 2019.
The dollar value of all home sales in December 2020 was $36.2 million, a large increase of 60.2% from the same month in 2019. This was also a new record for the month of December.
There were 139 new residential listings in December 2020. This was a large increase of 47.9% from the end of December 2019. “Even though this was the largest number of new listings added in the month of December for five years, it was still not enough to keep up with sales activity,” added Corey Breau.
Active residential listings numbered 567 units at the end of December. This was a large decline of 42.9% from the end of December 2019. Active listings haven't been this low in the month of December in more than 15 years.
Months of inventory numbered 3 at the end of December 2020, down from the 8.3 months recorded at the end of December 2019 and below the long-run average of 15 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.
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The data certainly bears out our observations of an increasingly hot real estate market.
On the rental side of things, I have been undergoing an apartment search the past few months and there has been precious little availability that is decent quality, well-located and moderately priced. Ultimately, I've been priced out of the Central Peninsula and will be moving to an apartment elsewhere in the city with acceptable transit access starting next month.
I'm anxiously awaiting the CMHC's rental market data for October 2020 (set to be published next week), to see if my anecdotal experience is also reflected there.
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U-haul released their migration trends (not an exact indicator of population growth but a good gauge of it) and Saint John is number 25 in Canada as a top destination for uhaul one way drop offs (only NB city to make list). The only other Atlantic Canada city to make list is Charlottetown at number 23. If I read stats right, 52% of all uhaul one way trips end up in Saint John. It just confirms what I’ve been seeing. One weekend uptown it seemed every other street had a uhaul unloading. If you drive uptown there are tons of cars with Ontario plates. Driving anywhere in city seems like every 10th car has a Ontario plate. The housing market is so tight too - very few properties available compared to before.
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