Average home price rises to $397,126

Average home prices in Peterborough shot up in November over October as the city and county’s housing market continued to heat up after cooling off a bit in the summer.

The average home sale price was $397,126 in November, up about 4.2 per cent from $381,000 a month earlier. The average home price year-to-date also remains near the $400,000 mark (up about 33 per cent from the average price of around $300,000 in 2015).

There were 174 residential home sales in November, the Peterborough and the Kawarthas Association of Realtors reported Friday. While that’s down 7 per cent from November 2016 it was still slightly above the 10-year average for sales in November.

“While activity has still not fully recovered from the big dropoff back this summer, it is well on it’s way,” stated Dianne Tully, president of the Peterborough and the Kawarthas Association of Realtors. “The improvement in demand in recent months has started to tighten the market back up. In line with that, the average price has begun to re-accelerate.”

For the first 11 months of the year there were 2,640 residential unit sales, down 10.5 per cent from the same period in 2016. That’s also below the 2015 level, but is a higher pace than from years 2008 to 2014, the association reported.

While sales are improving, the supply of listings remains tight.

There were just 323 active residential listings at the end of November, which is a record low for this time of year and down 6.9 per cent from a year ago. Normally there are about 1,000 listings at this time of year.

There were 204 new listings in November, that’s down 1.4 per cent from a year ago and also a two-decade low for new November listings.

The months of inventory (how long it would take to sell the existing listings at the current sales rate) at the end of November amounted to 1.9 months, unchanged from a year ago but less than a third of the long-term average for this time of year, the association reports.

There were 197 sales of all types of properties in November, down 8.4 per cent year-over-year. The total value of all property sales was $75 million in November, up 8.7 per cent from November 2016.