December caps busy sales year
RECORD MONTH PUSHES AREA HOME SALES TO $690M
A record number of sales in December capped a busy year for Lethbridge-area real estate professionals.
Home buyers signed 158 purchase agreements in December — up 22.5 per cent from a year earlier. That tied the region’s all-time record for the month, set back in 1993.
The transactions also pushed the 2017 dollar volume to $690 million, according to figures released by the Lethbridge and District Association of Realtors. Their report covers all multiplelisting (MLS) sales through real estate offices from Taber west to the B.C. border.
Through the year, officials report 2,555 housing units were sold, about the same as 2016, But the average price rose to $264,482, up 1.2 per cent from a year earlier. Over the last decade, however, Lethbridge-area prices moved 17.6 per cent higher.
While the most popular price range in 2016 was $240,000 to $259,999, the board adds, last year’s sales records show the $220,000 to $239,999 group was the busiest. But 100 sales were for more than $500,000 and a further 25 were for properties that sold for $750,000 to $1 million.
And 17 sales — not necessarily residential — were for more than $1 million.
At year’s end the board had 1,292 active listings, it reports, 1,143 of them residential. Owners added 176 residential and 18 non-residential properties to those listings during December.
But the Lethbridge real estate agencies’ sales-to-new-listings ratio (68.9 per cent in December) continues to increase.
The full inventory of homes on Dec. 31 could hypothetically be sold within 5.5 months — down from 9.4 months in 2012. The number of months of inventory indicates how quickly those homes would sell based on the current rate of sales activity, the board explains.
All told, residential and non-residential sales across the Lethbridge region reached $741.39 million last year, up from $730.22 million in 2016 and $707.11 million in 2015. The Lethbridge association counts about 325 Realtors covering the city and Lethbridge County, as well as communities in the municipal districts and counties of Cardston, Crowsnest Pass, Pincher Creek, Taber, Warner and Willow Creek.
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