Tight supply of homes for sale in Sarnia area continued in April
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The number of homes sold in the Sarnia-area continues to slow while the total dollar value of local sales declined in April, but the price of homes didn’t show any signs of dropping as a long-running shortage of listed properties continued, the president of the Sarnia-Lambton Real Estate Board says.
Rob Longo said the year-to-date median price of homes sold locally was $525,777 – a 22 per cent hike over the same point in 2021.
The number of local real estate sales, year to date, was 493 in April, which was down 22 per cent from April 2021.
The total dollar value of sales, year to date, in the Sarnia area in April was $282.2 million – down nine per cent from April 2021.
“The volume of activity is dropping because there’s not enough available,” Longo said.
The year-to-date average number of active listings in the local market was down 15 per cent over last April, Longo said.
“There were a lot fewer houses last month,” he said. “It’s going in the wrong direction.”
That has been a trend for about five years locally but picked up speed during the pandemic, Longo said.
“We keeping thinking it’s hitting the bottom but it continues to drop,” he said.
Locally, homes sold for an average of 114 per cent of their asking price in April, Longo said.
The local real estate board has been gathering information on buyers from outside the Sarnia area, and Longo said indications are the number arriving in April may be well over 100.
While home prices in the Sarnia area have been climbing, they are still well below nearby communities like London, he said.
“In Toronto, they’ve called it for years, ‘drive until you qualify,’” as buyers head out of the Greater Toronto Area in search of homes they can afford, Longo said. “That’s what we’ve been seeing in the last few years.”
Out-of-town buyers arriving in the Sarnia have been a mix of those from the Toronto area, as well as London, Kitchener, Hamilton and other areas of the province where prices were higher, Longo said.
“Scotiabank just came out with a report saying Ontario was short 660,000 housing units,” he said.
Sarnia is finishing work on an update of its official plan – the document outlining how land should be used in the municipality – and the real estate board has been lobbying for it to make more land available for new housing development.
Longo said Sarnia’s population has been growing by about 560 people annually.
“It seems to be more and more people coming to the area,” he said. “It’s not slowing down – it’s actually increasing. We feel Sarnia, alone, could easily grow by 1,000 people this year, potentially.”
Longo said the amount of new home construction the city is planning for falls far short of the need.
“The math doesn’t add up,” he said.
According to the city’s April building permit report, a total of 29 building permits for single-family homes had been issued this year, compared to 49 at the same point in 2021.
There were also fewer permits for multiple family units issued in the city by April, compared to the previous year.
“The only real solution to the lack of supply is more housing units, at the end of the day,” Longo said. “There are just not enough homes and that continues to push prices up.”
Longo said the number of homes coming on the market tends to rise in the spring.
“We’re hopeful of that and we’re very pleased to see that development is starting in the Rapids Parkway and the Camlachie areas,” he said.
pmorden@postmedia.com
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