How's the Market? Metro St. John's NL, February 2021

In this video, you will find the latest market stats from January 2021,
the latest interest rates, and new factors affecting our market.
So, how's the market in St.John's?

For January, overall the market has closed 162 homes in the metro St.John's area, which is 74% more homes than the same time last year. Keep in mind houses closed in January are mostly homes that have sold in November and December and closed in January.

The average sale price is now $293K which has gone up about 7.4% from the same time last year, this is significant because it's the highest since 2015.

The average time to sell a house now is about 79 days, which is about the same as this time last year. In the marketplace what I'm seeing a lot is that new listings are getting multiple offers and a lot of the older inventory has been picking up because of the inventory issue.

We have a bit of an inventory shortage compared to the previous years. The lowest interest rate I've come across recently is 1.39% for a five-year fixed and that's coming from the mortgage brokers. If you're looking for a variable rate, the lowest I've come across is 1.5%. Prime is still staying at 2.45% as we speak.

I'm not an economist but these are just some of the factors that i think you might want to know when you're considering where the market is going.

From a province employment standpoint, multiple factors seem to be playing in the oil and gas field. Oil prices have gone back up to 60 dollars per gallon this month and one of the bigger companies in the oil and gas field like Equinor is said to be moving their business from Alberta to Newfoundland. More drilling permits have been applied and approved this month and mineral exploration on the island is said to be at a 5-year high.

Immigration is one of the areas that I think could be playing a pretty heavy role in our real estate market coming up. The province has increased its efforts in immigration, especially in the tech sector. There's a new program called the Priority Skills NL and it's making it more attractive for skilled professionals to come to the province. If you're interested there's a link under the video. Since it's election season, we're seeing parties are paying more attention to immigration issues to combat the declining birth rates. I'm seeing numbers saying that they're increasing the number of immigrants that they're bringing into the province from 1500 to 5 000 a year. So overall as a market we sell about 3000 homes a year; the extra 3 500 people that they bringing into the province could potentially give us quite an upward force into the market and I do certainly hope that they're successful.

Given the recent spike in the new confirmed cases, we're seeing quite a bit of cancellation with buyers and sellers wanting to wait and see what's going to happen. It probably won't affect much for our stats in February but it'll likely further reduce the inventory we have.

So if you're thinking of selling it might be a good time to start getting ready. If you have any questions send us a message or comment below and I'll be happy to help.

Sources: Buyers or Sellers Market​ , Priority Skills NL​

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