Cliff Barron here with my real estate market update for March 13, 2023. To recap, in the update I posted at the end of January, I mentioned that I thought the market had bottomed out a little bit and that it wasn't a bad idea to get into the market. Then, we had a few rate increases.  Last week we didn't have any rate increase, so it just stayed put where it is.

I have something interesting I'd like to share with you from ITSO (Information Technology Systems Ontario) - they represent many real estate boards in southern Ontario. Their stats show that the trend went down, down, down. Then in January of this year, the trend finally started to turn. So what happened was that in January things did bottom out. We've turned the corner and we're slowly starting to see things come back up again. Prices aren't really going up much, that's the one thing to keep in mind, but the number of sales have increased.  Prices have gone up a little bit, maybe 1%, just a tiny little bit. The number of sales are increasing because inventory is still really low -that's the key right now. Rates held last week, which was nice. 

One thing we have to consider too, is that the rates by the US fed are coming out next week and we have to make sure we aren't too far off. We should be pretty much parallel with the US because if we don't, then it affects the Canadian dollar - exports and imports and all that stuff. We basically have to work with them to keep our rates relatively the same. 

So I predict a rate increase next but that doesn't matter, because the market is actually getting better. It's not a bad time to sell  - things are moving and showings are up.  Prices aren't crazy up - just up a little bit - just a tick! It's tougher to buy right now because there isn't alot of inventory, that's the hard part.  So when it comes to buying or selling first, if you've got a big place, think of selling it first with a longer closing. If you've got a smaller place and you want to upsize to something bigger, buy the big place first because the smaller one is going to sell relatively quickly.

So that's a bit of a market update for you.  It's looking good, we're heading into the spring which is always busy, but I kind of predict that we will see a bit of a slowdown in summer. July, August - it usually slows at that time but this year I think we may get hit a little bit harder because I think the rates are going to go up again. Towards the end of the summer though we may see a bit of a drop possibly.  I think sales are slowly going to creep up and prices will slowly creep up over the next few months. 

Those are my predictions - if you have any questions on the current market or just about real estate in general, don't hesitate to give me a call.  I'm always around and happy to help.  Take care!