Average home price $384,762 in December

The value of home sales in Peterborough city and county last month hit an all-time record for December.

While unit sales were about the same as a year, the average home sale price in December was $384,762, up from an average of around $325,000 in December 2016.

The Peterborough and the Kawarthas Association of Realtors reported 105 residential units were sold in December, just one less than a year earlier and in line with the 10-year average sales volume for December.

The association finished the year with 2,745 residential sales, down 10.2 per cent from the annual record set in 2016 and also down from 2015, but the total sales for the year were above the annual volumes recorded from 2008 to 2014

“Residential sales activity finished the year at fairly normal levels, splitting the difference between spring highs and summer lows,” stated Dianne Tully, president of the Peterborough and the Kawarthas Association. “There has been speculation that the improvement in sales over the last few months could have been, at least in part, the result of buyers looking to get into the market in advance of new tougher mortgage rules that took effect Jan. 1. We’ll need a few more months of data to answer that question. Meanwhile, on the supply side we’re still looking at record-lows, which will likely put further upward pressure on prices in the new year.”

Overall supply of listings remains extremely low heading into the new year.

New residential listings added to the association’s Multiple Listing Service numbered 84, down 13.4 per cent from December 2016. It was the lowest level in more than three decades for new supply in the month of December, the association reported.

That left just 216 active residential listings on the association’s MLS system at the end of December, down 10.4 per cent from December 2016. That’s also a record-low for the end of December, the association reports, since the long-term average for this time of the year is close to 650 listings.

Residential months of inventory numbered just 2.1 at the end of December 2017, down slightly from 2.3 months at the end of December 2016 and less than a third of the long-term average for this time of year, the association reported.

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.

The value of all home sales was $40.4 million in December, up 19.3 per cent from December 2016 and the highest value for the month of December on record.

Sales of all types of properties numbered 121 units in December, down 7.6 per cent year-over-year.