The tight real estate market in our region is showing no signs of letting up any time soon.
New numbers from the Saint John Real Estate Board show 150 homes were sold in the month January.
While that is below the January record set just a year ago, it remains well above the long-term average for this time of year.
“There was no momentum lost moving from 2021 to 2022, as sales activity remains historically strong and well above almost every other January on record,” Corey Breau, president of the board, said in a news release.
Breau said there has also been an “almost alarming decline” in the number of new listings coming onto the market to start the year.
There were 145 new listings last month, a sharp decrease of 23.7 per cent year-over-year and the lowest number of new listings added in the month of January in more than 35 years.
Breau said the ongoing demand, combined with the low number of new listings, is drawing down overall inventories at an increasing pace.
There were only 300 homes on the market at the end of January — about one-quarter or one-third of the number we would typically see this time of year.
The months of inventory — the number of months it would take to sell current inventories at the current rate of sales activity — numbered 2, down from the long-run average of 13.6 months for this time of year.
“We hope to see more supply return to the market over the next few months as we approach the spring but it’s going to take a significant number of new listings to ease the market tightness even a little,” said Breau.
The average price of homes sold in January was $262,513, up nearly 32 per cent year over year. The dollar value of all home sales set a new record for the month of January at $39.4 million.
The Saint John Real Estate Board covers the southern part of New Brunswick to the U.S. border in St. Stephen and includes the counties of Saint John, Kings, Charlotte and portions of Queens.
