The Barrie and District Association of Realtors says the Simcoe County real estate market is starting to pick back up again, despite staying relatively low compared with the record highs seen the year prior.
The latest report from the Barrie and District Association of Realtors shows that while the average price of a home sold in April was down compared with last year, it was up compared with the month before.
“We’ve reached the intersection where last year’s sales levels were beginning to decline and this year’s market is beginning to recover while marking the lowest year-over-year decline in nearly two years,” said Lindsay Percy, chair of the realtors association.
The average price of a home sold in Simcoe County in the month of April was down 12.5 per cent from last year and down 21 per cent in Barrie compared with a year prior, the association reported.
The average price of homes sold in Simcoe County in April was $847,272 and in Barrie it was $736,106. That’s up from the averages in March, which were $788,907 in Simcoe County and $724,965 in Barrie.
“Sales activity had been moving sideways for several months without any signs of recovery but April bucked this trend, posting a sharp month-over-month increase,” Percy said.
The benchmark price of all homes was down over 16 per cent compared with April of 2022, with the benchmark price of a single-family home in April standing at $852,300, with $575,200 for a townhouse/row unit and $531,100 for an apartment.
Sales activity in surrounding areas was down modestly by 2.8 per cent year over year, totalling 209 units in April 2023.
The association said the number of new listings saw a sharp decrease of 38 per cent from April 2022, with 687 new residential listings in April 2023.
“New listings remain subdued, which means that the overall supply of inventory is now falling, and the market is tightening up. Absent any meaningful influx of new supply during the spring market we will almost certainly see the re-emergence of multiple offers and stronger upward price pressure,” Percy said.