It’s hard to believe that we’ve hit the half way point of 2016 already. It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating the start of the spring market. Ah, those were heady times, buyers sat patietly waiting for the impending influx of new listings to satisfy a hungry desire for a place to call home. Well, months later, many of those same buyers are still waiting. New listings barely trickled to the market causing more multiple offers than ever before, not just on houses but condos as well.

It’s not unusual for listings to taper off before long weekends. The last thing anyone wants to do is hang around the city when all their friends are at the cottage. That explains the 46% decline in new listings last week. On the other hand, if you are determined to buy there is a slight chance that your buyer competition is also sitting by the dock somewhere. Clearly that was the thinking last week as sales only backed off by a marginal 17% and we still recorded 70% of homes trading at or above the list price.

Condo market buyers and sellers expressed a similar sentiment. Listings backed off by 25.5% while sales slipped by 19%. The condo market is still filling in the gaps left by the housing market as 35.5% of all condos sold happened at or above the list price. For a better understanding of how the market has performed consider that two years ago a mere 12% of condos sold in multiple offers.