2014 Second Best Year Ever for Barrie & District Home Sales
Residential property sales recorded through the MLS® System of the Barrie & District Association of REALTORS® Inc. numbered 197 units in December 2014. This was a small decline of two per cent (four sales) from December 2013.
Within the City of Barrie sales activity edged down 1.7 per cent (two sales) on a year-over-year basis. The City of Barrie saw 116 residential sales in December. A year-over-year decrease of 2.4 per cent was recorded in surrounding areas, where sales activity totalled 81 units.
A total of 4,795 homes traded hands in 2014, up 3.2 per cent from 2013.
“2014 was the second best year ever for home sales in the Barrie region, surpassed only by 2007,” said Bruce Shipley, President of the Barrie and District Association of REALTORS®. “The market remained tight in 2014, and that led to the largest year-over-year price increase in nine years.”
The annual average price for all homes sold via the Association’s MLS® System in 2014 was a record $341,023, up 7.3 per cent from 2013.
The annual average price figure for homes sold within the City of Barrie was $319,558. This was a 6.6 per cent increase compared to the average selling price in 2013. The annual average price figure for the surrounding areas was $371,671, an increase of 7.8 per cent from 2013.
The Barrie & District Association of REALTORS® cautions that over a period of time, the use of average price information can be useful in establishing trends, but it does not indicate actual prices in widely divergent areas or account for price differentials between geographical areas.
The dollar value of all home sales in December 2014 was $68.3 million, rising 17.5 per cent from year-ago levels. This was a record for the month of December.
December posted another increase in new supply after the decline in November. New supply has risen by double-digit figures on a year-over-year basis in seven of eight past months. New residential listings rose 22.3 per cent from December 2013 to 252 units in December 2014.
Overall supply remains below most of the past decade. Active residential listings on the Association’s MLS® System numbered 828 units at the end of December 2014, down 2.2 per cent from year-ago levels.
There were 4.2 months of inventory at the end of December 2014. This was unchanged from the end of December 2013 and stood below the long-run average for this time of year. 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.
Sales of all property types in the Barrie region numbered 202 units in December, down 5.6 per cent compared to December 2013. The total value of all properties sold in December 2014 was $69.7 million, up 14.2 per cent on a year-over-year basis.