Ep 17: Guelph real estate weekly sales update Jun1-30, 2025

In this episode, Ryan looks at June 1-30 sales in Guelph real estate, but also what has transpired in the first half of 2025. Some of the largest volume real estate months are now behind us!

You can always get touch with Beth and Ryan Waller on their website

Transcript

Welcome to the Guelph Real Estate Report podcast with your host and Guelph realtor, Ryan Waller. This podcast is designed to provide information for those buying and selling homes in the Guelph real estate market to make the process more informative, fun, and a little less stressful. Now on with the show. Hey everyone, and welcome back to episode number 17 of the Guelph Real Estate Report podcast. My name is Ryan Waller and I work in Guelph Real Estate with my wife Beth. In this episode, we are going to talk about the sales for the period of June 1st to June 30th, but also because it lines up with the end of the half, the first half of 2025. We're going to talk a little bit about what has happened between January and June to get us here, and what we anticipate is going to happen in the coming months. The year started off pretty normally. We had a typical January, nothing really unusual. Some would say it was even better than last year. But the challenges really started once we moved into February and March, where there was a lot of talk in the US about tariffs. Um, and um, as a result, it spooked a lot of local buyers into really starting to move to the sidelines. Um, the automotive industry would severely impact Guelph, Kitchener-Waterloo, Brantford, Hamilton, and people who may have been considering moving decided it's not worth it. We don't know what's happening here. This is a little bit scary. I'm not going to do anything while this is up in the air. So the market in February and March, uh, was very slow. It was slow. It was as slow as we had probably seen it since the early days of Covid. People just really stopped doing anything. Um, and then we moved into April, where the market was still impacted. There was a Canadian election, and there was still some uncertainty in the market out there. And as a result, we finished down double digits in terms of the overall number of homes that sold, because people were still nervous. Uh, they're nervous about the economy. They're nervous about, uh, their own jobs. Um, they're nervous about what the US government could do. The Canadian government could do what's going to happen with interest rates, all these sorts of things, a wide range of reasons why people just sat on the sidelines. And a big one, which we'll talk about in a bit. Up until then, we have been significantly below a prior year 6%, 10%, 15%. So June has picked it up. And as we look into July, there is another interest rate announcement at the end of July. So perhaps we're even going to see an interest rate cut. If you break it out by segments. Golf has two segments. One of them is a freehold segment where it's a detached home or a semi detached home that does not have fees. And the other segment is the condo segment, which is apartment condos, townhouses, stacked condos or anything that has a fee. If you look at the freehold segment consistently, you're probably going to see this is an average but around 100 sales per month in the condo segment. On average, you're probably looking at about 40 sales per month. And we mapped out this year so far by month, the sales of each segment to try to figure out whether one of them is trending better than the other. And what we found was the freehold segment is gaining market importance or gaining market share in that they represent a larger portion of the sales. In fact, in some cases this segment represented over 70% of the total sales and in particular in May and in June. So it means that the freehold segment is selling quicker. It's obviously selling faster because the sales are coming in and it is a more important segment while the condo market is stagnant. The other thing to point out here is that the whole sales cycle takes a lot longer than we're used to as well. So we're a Holmwood list in May and oftentimes sell within the month of May. It's likely now going to be conditionally sold in May, and maybe even has a sale of property condition that goes until July. And so the whole process itself just takes a lot longer. And it's something this market isn't used to. But I think in many cases it's more of a healthy market. It's more indicative of people being able to make decisions, more informed decisions and have the time to do so. Specific to the month of June 12th, we had a total of 182 sales. 53 in the condo townhouse stacked townhouse segment and 129 in the detached semi-detached segment. Um, within the condo segment, there were, uh, a low price of 326,000. A high price of 1.2 million, with an overall average of just over 600,000, which has been slowly decreasing over time. Homes sold at about 98% of the asking price. Uh, with four of them selling over the asking, six at the asking and 43 sold under the last posted asking price. Uh, not much has changed here. We've been seeing a slow, uh, a slow time in this segment. Three of the months this year that would be March, April and June had over 50 sales in this segment, but the other 3rd January, February and, uh, May had under 50 sales in this segment. So it really isn't lighting the world on fire. There are 240 of them available. Uh, so we've got about five, 4 to 5 months of inventory in the condo market, and there is more room to negotiate as a buyer. If we look at the detached segment, 129 units sold, 490,000 was the low, which I believe was in the ward. Uh, 2.3 million was the high in Saint George's Park. Uh, and the overall average was 924,000. Again, a slight decrease at total, uh, average of the homes sold was close to 99% of the last listed asking price, with 23 of them selling over the asking price. Uh, 17 at the asking and 89 of the 129 sold under the asking price. What we did notice, um, and this is the benefit of looking at the data on a more regular basis, is that the higher end segment or homes over $1 million in Guelph, we're used to seeing about 15 to 20% of the homes selling in any given month, being over the million dollar mark. But in June, that number was 30%. And it's unusual, especially in a market where prices are trending down. But we do have a theory to this. And we've had a number of clients, um, that we work with actually do this, where they're using this opportunity of a slower market to buy a more expensive house and be able to negotiate a little bit better on the price, because 5% off of a $1.2 million house is more money than 5% of an $800,000 house. So they're using this opportunity to move up to their next house at 1.2 million and sell in a faster, more competitive market that's selling around 800,000. So there is a bit of a benefit to those people to do that. And it could be the reason why we're starting to see a bit of a blip or a trend upwards in the million dollar plus sale segment. And of course, the one thing we always talk about in real estate is that you can use all sorts of metrics or fancy terms or buzzwords, but the reality is there are less transactions happening because buyers and sellers are not coming together. They don't agree. And oftentimes, of course, it's on price. And we have two sides of a transaction obviously. And if one side disagrees with the other and they can't come to a term that they both agree on. They both walk away. And as an example, if someone was selling $1 million house in Guelph, but they decided they really wanted to get rid of it and priced it at $300,000, of course there would be buyers. There would be tons and tons of buyers that would come out to buy $1 million house for $300,000. That's an extreme example. But there are buyers out there. There are not buyers in many cases that are willing to pay what the seller is asking for their home right now. We'll have a whole episode on this next. That'll be episode 18. Because it is beginning to be a bit of a problem, and it's a source of frustration for both sides of a transaction. And Beth and I have personal examples that we have had with clients on both sides of this, and it's not our client's fault. It is the market in general that is trying to do two things. One is buyer is trying to obviously get the cheapest price they can, and some of the tactics they use are a bit bizarre. And sellers are trying to get the highest price they can because for years and years and years, waiting or doing different pricing strategies has typically worked in their favor and in many cases now it's not. The key, of course, is to price your home appropriately for the market out of the gate so that you have the best opportunity to sell it, if that's what your goal is. And obviously, most people that are looking at houses are interested in buying one. And most people that take the time to get their house ready to sell are interested in selling. And I think as long as both parties can be realistic about the outcome, realistic about the market pricing, market values and market conditions, homes will sell. It's when you get the outliers of unrealistic buyers and unrealistic sellers that you do come to a head and nothing happens. Thanks for tuning in. You can find a text version of this on our blog at Beth and Ryan, and you can also find a video version of this on our YouTube channel. If you have any questions comments need to discuss something. You can always book an appointment with us on our website at bethandryan.ca