BARRIE & DISTRICT MARKET UPDATE APRIL 2015

esidential property sales recorded through the MLS® System of the Barrie & District Association of REALTORS® Inc. numbered 580 units in April 2015. This was an increase of 23.1 per cent from April 2014, and a record for the month of April.

Within the City of Barrie, sales activity rose 11.9 per cent on a year-over-year basis. The City of Barrie saw 320 residential sales in April. A year-over-year surge of 40.5 per cent was recorded in surrounding areas, where sales activity totalled 260 units.

On a year-to-date basis home sales totalled 1,584 units over the first four months of 2015. This is up 17.7 per cent from the same period in 2014.

“April was a very strong month for the Barrie and District resale housing market, in fact it was almost the strongest ever,” said the President of the Barrie and District Association of REALTORS®. “With supply still not keeping pace with demand the market is now tighter than it’s ever been, and that’s pushing prices higher.”

The year-to-date average price for all homes sold via the Association’s MLS® System in 2015 was $358,187, up 6.9 per cent from the same period in 2014.

The year-to-date average price figure for homes sold within the City of Barrie was $329,087. This was a 3.9 per cent increase compared to the year-to-date average selling price in 2014.

The year-to-date average price figure for the surrounding areas was $399,828, an increase of 10.3 per cent from the year-to-date average selling price in 2014.

The Barrie & District Association of REALTORS® cautions that over a period of time, the use of average price information can be useful in establishing trends, but it does not indicate actual prices in widely divergent areas or account for price differentials between geographical areas.

The dollar value of all home sales in April 2015 was $217.9 million, rising 38.3 per cent from year-ago levels. This was a new all-time record and the first time the dollar volume had broken $200 million in any month.

April saw another increase in new supply. New residential listings rose 6.1 per cent from April 2014 to 911 units in April 2015. This was the third highest level for the month of April.

Overall supply remains below levels from most of the past decade. Active residential listings on the Association’s MLS® System numbered 1,394 units at the end of April 2015, edging down two units from year-ago levels.

There were just 2.4 months of inventory at the end of April 2015 – a record low. 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.

Sales of all property types in the Barrie region numbered 606 units in April, rising 24.9 per cent compared to April 2014. The total value of all properties sold in April 2015 was $225.2 million, up 40.4 per cent on a year-over-year basis.

The Barrie and District Association of REALTORS® Inc. covers a geographical area that includes the City of Barrie and part or all of the surrounding townships, including Springwater, Oro-Medonte, Innisfil, Essa, Bradford-West Gwillimbury and Clearview. The Association provides continuing education, Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®), statistical information, and many other services to its members.BARRIE & DISTRICT MARKLET UPDATE  APRIL 2015