MARKET UPDATE MAY 2015 Barrie & Surrounding Area

Residential property sales recorded through the MLS® System of the Barrie & District Association of REALTORS® Inc. numbered 625 units in May 2015. This was an increase of 7.6 per cent from May 2014 and a new all-time record.

Within the City of Barrie, sales activity rose 7.4 per cent on a year-over-year basis. The City of Barrie saw 375 residential sales in May. A year-over-year increase of 24.1 per cent was recorded in surrounding areas, where sales activity totalled 288 units.

On a year-to-date basis home sales totalled 2,209 units over the first five months of 2015. This is up 14.6 per cent from 2014 and a record for this period – currently 15 sales ahead of 2007.

“The theme all around the Greater Golden Horseshoe right now is very strong demand and tight supply,” said thr President of the Barrie and District Association of REALTORS®. “Some markets have seen a good amount of new supply come on stream this spring, and those are the markets that are setting sales records as those new properties quickly sell. The Barrie region is in that group right now, with over 1,000 new listings hitting the market in May.”

The year-to-date average price for all homes sold via the Association’s MLS® System in 2015 was $375,810, up 9.5 per cent from the same period in 2014.

The year-to-date average price figure for homes sold within the City of Barrie was $336,350. This was a 4.7 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 $401,374, an increase of 10.8 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 May 2015 was $234.9 million, rising 17.8 per cent from year-ago levels. This was a new all-time record and only the second time the dollar volume had broken $200 million in any month.

May saw another increase in new supply. New residential listings edged up 1.9 per cent from May 2014 to 1,009 units in May 2015.

Overall supply remains below levels from most of the past decade. Active residential listings on the Association’s MLS® System numbered 1,481 units at the end of May 2015, down four per cent from year-ago levels.

There were just 2.4 months of inventory at the end of May 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.MARKET UPDATE