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Expert advice, market reports, and tips from the Niagara Region real estate professionals.
Numbers don’t lie. At least that’s what they say. But they don’t always tell the whole story. According to the stats provided by the local board, the Niagara Association of Realtors, the number of sales that came in in January was 335. That’s down marginally from December (348) and actually up 11 from the 324 registered in January one year ago.
In many ways December sales figures held no real surprises. Ever since the end of Covid, we have seen the market numbers gain momentum in the first half of the year and then trail off over the last half. And here we are talking both unit sales and average sale price. What is surprising however, is the severity of the drop in average sale price in December.
Looking at the sale figures for November we see the average residential sale price is down not only regionally, but in 8 of the 10 municipalities we follow. That is not particularly surprising. It’s a trend that repeats itself year after year. Prices build in the first half of the year, and slide in the second half. Not every month of course. Last year for example prices spiked in October for some reason. This year there was a $5,205 bump up in September over August. But overall, the pattern holds.
There have been a lot of unusual external pressures affecting the market, not only over the course of 2025, but especially in the final months of the year. The tariff issues with the U.S. continue to make headlines. The Bank of Canada once again cut its benchmark rate by 1/4% and on top of that, there is all the uncertainty surrounding the newly introduced Federal Budget. And yet, in spite of it all, the real estate market continues to follow a pretty predictable path as set out over the past few years.
Although there are no real surprises in the sales stats that came in for August, there are a few items of note. The first involves price. The overall feeling among realtors, and in fact in some reports coming in across the country, is that prices are sliding. But that is not totally accurate.
Interesting dynamics going on in the real estate market at the moment. Prices, as we expected, are falling as we move into the second half of the year. July at $663,841 is actually down $13,466 from June. A drop in one month of 2%. At the same time, unit sales, which should be falling in lock step with prices are actually on the rise. In fact, July recorded 648 sales across the region. That not only compares favourably with the 529 figure we saw in June. It is actually the strongest month so far this year. Interesting.
If this year follows the pattern of the past couple of years, we can expect a continued strengthening of market dynamics, both with respect to average price and also with unit sales right up to the end of June. But then a tapering off of both on to the end of the year. So, let’s take a look at May’s stats and see if that is what is happening
Whenever we sit down to review the numerical sales data, month by month and year by year, we always look to see if there are any trends evident. I speak here both in terms of number of unit sales and also average residential sale price. And then we ask ourselves the question – “Why did this happen?”. What we are trying to do, of course, is extrapolate out and thus predict what will happen in the months ahead. We primarily follow unit sales and average residential sales prices. As I’ve said before, I don’t particularly track new listings coming in, because these numbers are unreliable. They include properties that expire and are re-listed as well as listings that are re-serviced. So, while available inventory is a useful barometer, new listings are not.
Whether we are tracking unit sales or average sale price, there is a trend that seems to happen, year after year, provided no extreme external pressures are being applied. And that is up in the spring and down in the fall.
