Was 2011 Good For The Real Estate Market?

If you have been keeping track, there were a significant number of good news stories floating around about the Real Estate markets in our province and most seemed to be quite promising. Well now that we have the full stats for the year, how exactly does it compare to the previous year and was it as wonderful as they said?
Before I go down that path, from the activity of the for sale and sold signs out there and talking to people in my travels, 2011 definitely felt like a more optimistic year than 2010. Number of for sale signs seemed to be lower and when they did go up, they didn’t seem to last as long. Or so it seemed to me, perhaps I just started becoming accustomed to them?
Well, according to the numbers much of this was true as it was a busier year. We saw almost 10% more single family homes sold in 2011 versus 2010. The final sales numbers for 2011 were 13,186 versus 12,091 for 2010. When it comes to condos, the numbers weren’t quite as impressive with a less than 4% increase from 5,176 in 2010 up to 5,382 in 2011. Yet it still increased, so that should be a positive!
The negative aspect regarding condos is the average and median sales prices both declined from last year. The average decreased from $289,905 in 2010 to $287,172 in 2011, while the median price dropped $5,000. This tells us the number of lower priced units being sold significantly jumped, which really isn’t a bad thing, unless you own an expensive condo.
When we look at the average and median sales for single family homes, the story is slightly different with the average increasing from $461,132 up to $466, 402, while the median dropped by $1,000. In this case it looks like we may have sold a few more higher priced homes this year, but the lower priced market was still very active, which again is a good thing.
The one surprising statistic for me was the amount of time properties spent on the market. As I mentioned earlier, it felt like properties were selling quicker and staying on the market for a shorter duration, but this turned out to be false. Single family homes were taking three extra days longer than 2010 at an average of 46 days on the market and condos were taking an extra six days with an average of 54 days on market.
This usually indicates there are more properties for buyers to pick from and thus taking longer to choose, but in this case, listings had actually decreased. We can only surmise at this point that people were simply taking their time to make sure they made the right decisions.
One other interesting statistic that pops out was how slow 2011 started out. If I recall the weather hadn’t been cooperating as much to start the year off as it is this year. Will our warmer December and start to January kick start the markets a bit? It will definitely be something to take note of as it may cause the spring activity to start even earlier than usual.
Time will only tell, but it will be something I will be watching.