Sarnia-Lambton's real estate market picked up steam in February when Ontario's COVID-19 lockdown was lifted.
Real Estate Board President Rob Longo said 154 homes sold, a nearly 30 per cent increase over the same month last year.
"As some of these restrictions have started to get lifted, we're going to see more homes coming up for sale," said Longo. "Obviously, time of year plays a factor for us here locally as well, as we see things move towards better weather and towards spring, we're hoping to see more (homes) come available on the market as well that way."
February's dollar volume, of nearly $80 million, represents a 96.6 per cent increase over the same month last year when $44 million in sales was recorded.
Longo said there were 153 new listings, compared to 143 in February 2020.
"Inventory's been short for the last year or so. The nice thing that we saw in February, was that we've seen the number of listings actually tick up slightly, so we're about seven per cent higher, year-over-year, over last February 2020 in terms of the number of listings. If we can see that trend continue and the number of listings keeps going up every month, we can hopefully take a little bit of pressure off a very highly pressurized market right now."
The median sale price so far this year is $446,000, while the average sale price was $490,000.
"We did see in February five sales above $1 million dollars, and actually three sales above $1.4 million dollars, which obviously is contributing to the higher average sale price."
Longo said the two most active price ranges for the month were $450,000 to $500,000, and $550,000 to $600,000.
Local homes were on the market for an average of seven days in February, compared to 13 days in the second month of 2020 and 32 days in February 2011.