More Home Sale Records Set In January

Greater Saint John continues to see a seller’s market when it comes to home sales, according to the local real estate board.

The region set another sales record in January with 167 homes changing hands, an increase of 25 per cent year-over-year.

Corey Breau, president of the Saint John Real Estate Board, said new listings outpaced sales for the first time in months as 187 new listings were added.

But Breau said overall inventory levels fell continued to drop and reached their lowest January level in two decades.

Active residential listings numbered 538 units at the end of January, a drop of nearly 47 per cent from a year earlier.

“At the end of January, we were at 3.2 months of inventory, which was down over January of last year, but it’s on par for what we were seeing toward the end of 2020,” said Breau.

Months of inventory indicates the number of months it would take to sell current inventories at the current rate of sales activity.

Breau said he does not expect the record-breaking pace of home sales to slow down any time soon.

“But what we will see is more listings on the market in the spring,” he said. “Usually people like to get their home listed for the spring market, and we do expect to see that increase of listings in the coming months.”

The average home sold for nearly $200,000 in January but Breau said he anticipates prices will level out a bit over the coming months.

“There was a few sales over a million dollars and there was a handful over $500,000 so that brought the average sale price for the month of January,” he said.

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.