It was with some sadness that we heard the news this week of the death of Wiarton Willy, the lovable groundhog that has predicted with less than perfect results whether we would be free of the grip of winter or due for a prolonged cold spell. And, as we thought fondly of Willy we were reminded of one of our favourite non-real estate movies starring Bill Murray – Groundhog Day. If Bill Murray was a Realtor® he would be living a version of Groundhog Day today. Waking up this morning and looking at the trend in sales he might think he was back in March.  Listings and sales are up in condos and the freehold market and more importantly the percentage of properties selling above their list price reached 40% in both the condo and freehold markets.  While 40% of sales above list may still be far from the Spring days of 80-90% of deals selling above their advertised price it is certainly an interesting trend that we will be watching carefully.

In the freehold market new listings jumped 30% to 306 from 237 the previous week. Several of those new listings are actually re-lists of properties that were previously listed in the Spring market but it is important to note that the market has not been flooded by listings that did not sell in the spring.  In most neighbourhoods these re-lists represent only a small portion of all the new listings. Sales in the freehold market jumped significantly nearly tripling from the previous week with 110 freehold properties being sold compared to only 39 in the previous week. We recently heard the story of a property that had been previously listed, but not sold, in the spring that came back to the market with a slightly lower asking price only to be sold in multiple offers for more than the original spring price.

The condo market also saw an uptick in new listings with 337 new units coming to market last week compared to 318 the week before.  While this increase is fairly small it does show a trend of balanced numbers of condo properties coming to market.  Condo sales also increased last week going from 95 two weeks ago to 132 last week.  This represents a healthy 40% increase in condo sales week over week and we will be watching carefully to see how the condo market trends through the remainder of the year.