House prices in Sarnia-Lambton continue to climb to record levels.
Real Estate Board Vice President Rob Longo said figures through October show an average sale price of $336,755, which is up eight per cent over last year.
"Average sale price is pretty generic, but it's a good frame of reference I always say, for people to consider when you're looking at a home, and when you consider $336,000, a new high as the average for everything, now you can kind of gauge yourself as to whether you're above or below the market and where your sort of are and how you fall into that."
Longo said 167 properties worth a total of more than $55 million sold in October, a record for the month, and dollar volume for the year is on a record pace at over $530 million.
"We are still on track for a record number of sales this year in terms of dollar volume. The number of actual transactions is down slightly, but the number of listings has been up year-over-year as well as over the last couple of months, which I think is good for the market and good for taking some of the pressure off the buyers and sellers out there," said Longo. "It still has been a seller's market, we've seen that through 2019 and I think that will continue, but with the number of listings that have slowly and healthfully sort of increased over the last couple of months, I think that will start to slow a little bit, which leads to a more balanced market."
Longo said the highest number of homes sold remains in the $200,000 to $220,000 price range, so there's still a lot of first-time home buyers locally.
He also said they're seeing a number of residents from the Toronto-area making their way to Sarnia-Lambton.
"We do see continued strength with relocations from the GTA area, and the nice thing is it's not just people looking to downsize and retire, we're seeing a lot of families and people coming in in the working-age groups, which is nice."