After a few "whirlwind" years, the president of Sarnia-Lambton's Real Estate Board is expecting the local market to be a bit calmer in 2023.
Rob Longo said the market has changed over the last six months, from a seller's market to one that is more balanced.
"The last few years have been a little bit of a whirlwind for real estate," said Longo. "We are expecting a much calmer 2023. I know a lot of people are concerned, or have questions about the market, and uncertainty in terms of interest rates -- in terms of pricing and things like that -- and what all of our indicators are showing, is that we're expecting interest rates to hold steady for the rest of the year. So, it will be nice and consistent on that front."
Longo believes the area has "bottomed out on prices" and "things have now started to increase again."
"Even though we did see six or seven months of continuous price declines in the middle of 2022, we have seen in the last quarter, the last three months basically, a consecutive price increase."
Longo said they're predicting that trend to continue for 2023 and projecting a steady five to six per cent overall price increase, compared to the higher increases experienced in the past few years.
"We're [still] expecting this year, overall, to be very busy. The only thing to keep in mind if you are planning to buy or sell a home, that process is taking a little bit longer now. If you're thinking about selling your home, it might take 30 to 60 days to sell, rather than the five to seven days we've been seeing in the last couple of years. So, you just might want to plan a little bit more ahead and have a little bit more foresight in some of your plans for this year."
Longo said 2022 ended on a positive note. December saw the highest median price point since April 2022, at just over $490,000, compared to $440,000 in 2021.
"We finished off 2022 pretty strong. We did see prices moving up in December and we did see prices overall for 2022 about 11 per cent higher than in 2021, which was a nice thing."
Listings also trended higher in 2022, with 244 in December, up 89 per cent from 2021.
Just over 1,500 houses sold last year, with the sales volume reaching $826 million by the end of December.