Hi Everyone,

I’m back with another quick blog, a first follow-up to the ‘What Will Happen to Housing Pricing In 2024’.

Again, I say I’ll try and keep this as short and simple as possible.  As expected, no rate cuts from the BoC, early indicators had the industry thinking this would happen in the spring window, but the latest news seems to indicate that the start of the rate cuts might be pushed out to the early summer, possibly the June or even the July dates (I’ll post a link at the end).

As for the looming or possible current recession, you can read contrasting articles on this as well, but my thoughts are that this will most likely be a soft landing, as opposed to a hard landing/crash, but keeping an eye on the day to day in the world of macroeconomics  will be something I continue to do on the day to day.

Okay, so January was a little busier than we expected it to be, given how low sales volumes where for 2023, and we did see an increase in price year over year for detached homes in Waterloo region…I’ll save you the time from reading the details in the blog, and again I’ll paste a link at the end.

For the past few weeks, we’ve seen an uptick in interest on homes, several properties going into competing offer scenarios that we might not have seen a few months ago, and wouldn’t usually expect to see in the January/February timeframe.  From an open house perspective, the majority of the realtors that I connect with on a regular basis have been experiencing much more traffic coming through open houses, which again isn’t always common during this timeframe.

In an effort to avoid this blog going beyond the ‘Short’ blog, here’s some final thoughts;  As much as I would’ve thought a year ago that we’d see more of a downward price correction in Waterloo region, we’re just not seeing it.  There’s lots of guesses and analysis on why that is, and my thoughts are it’s due to the growing region we live in, the proximity to the GTA, and a supply that cannot keep up with the demand.  Right now we’re within commute range of the GTA, and our area has an attractive reputation with out-of-town buyers.  As an agent that is out there on the daily showing houses, working with clients, I get an opportunity to meet other agents, home owners, sellers, etc, and indications right now are starting to look more like a pricing uptick in our area as opposed to a downtick.  Although, as an agent you’d think that I want the higher prices, that’s just not the case, I’d prefer a balanced market that enables people to move, pivot, shift as they choose or want to, not because they have to.

If you took the time to make it to this last sentence, I hope you got some value from this.

Cheers,

Rickey

 

PS>  This blog is just my high-level take, it’s not the view of any brokerage or real estate association that I’m affiliated with.

Links:

BoC Rate Dates 2024:

https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2023/07/2024-schedule-policy-interest-rate-announcements-major-publications/

• Wednesday, January 24*
• Wednesday, March 6
• Wednesday, April 10*
• Wednesday, June 5
• Wednesday, July 24*
• Wednesday, September 4
• Wednesday, October 23*
• Wednesday, December 11

 

January 2024 WRAR Stats

Waterloo Region’s Housing Market Shows Signs of Improvement in January