“What’s going on in the real estate market?”

This continues to be one of the most popular questions heard around office water coolers, watering holes, and seen in news reports and social media posts. Everywhere there is commentary from “experts” giving their opinions on the topic, and perhaps not surprisingly their tone ranges from glass-half-full to glass-half-empty, with everything in between.

However, does it really matter, beyond general interest, what’s happening across Canada, in Ontario, or even in the GTA? Perhaps, but what’s happening in East Gwillimbury’s market is likely much more useful to those that live here.

Therefore, in order to see if our local glass is half full or half empty, let's look at the actual results. (Note that unless otherwise specified, all numbers are from TRREB’s MLS data.)

After an 8.2% drop between 2022 and 2023 sales activity rebounded somewhat in 2024. The 513 homes were sold at an average price of $1.27M, which is lower than 2023’s $1.33M - a 4.4% drop. Initially you might think that increased market activity would have spurred pricing upward, but that’s not what the results show.

So what happened?

In previous years, we have seen quite a variation in how many of each property type are sold during the year, which, from a math (weighted average) perspective, has had a noticeable impact on the overall average sales price. For example, if typically higher priced detached homes make up most of the total activity, then we would expect to see a higher overall average sale price. Conversely, if lesser priced property types like semi-detached or town homes make up a great percentage of the total sales then the average price would be lower.

But we can rule this out in the 2023-2024 comparison as the property type mix was almost identical year over year. So we must look a little deeper…

The first place we can look is supply and demand. Could it be that consumers are experiencingnpricing fatigue from a prolonged period of inflation that seems to have hit them from every angle? These days most consumers are very likely to give every purchase, especially high ticket items like homes, increased scrutiny in the current economic environment. In early 2024 it looks like some of the consumers that stayed away in 2023 were lured back into the market in anticipation of interest rate drops as indicated by 50 sales/month average in the first 6 months. But as 2024 progressed the number of new listings each month increased as more and more sellers came into the market each month trying to grab a piece of that higher demand. With many more homes to choose from however, buyers could be a little more aggressive in their negotiating forcing sellers to accept lower sales prices.

In addition, let’s look way beyond the real estate market itself. National and international socio-political influences/events have been on the rise throughout 2024, and indeed into early 2025. Perhaps this caused enough economic uncertainty that potential home buyers decided to wait and see how things panned out. Indeed during the last 6 months of 2024 activity slowed to an average of only 36 sales/month.

But what does it all mean to EG’s real estate market? And more specifically, what does this mean for homeowners and the value of their homes? Should they be worried?

Quite simply - No.

According to TRREB, their total MLS sales activity was down from 2022 to 2023 about 8.6%, which is roughly the same as the market in EG. A year later they reported a slight 2.6% increase in MLS activity year over year, while at the same time the local market went up a much stronger 4.3%. This suggests buyers wanted to be in EG more than the average community across the entire GTA as a whole.

But more importantly let’s think about things from a calm, rational, and realistic place of real estate awareness. Given the high level of complexity and dollar amounts involved in buying and selling a home, it’s typically not something done on an impulse without much consideration. Indeed according to Statscan, Canadian homeowners move every 7-10 years on average. But let’s say it’s even just 5 years - how have local homeowners fared? The average sale price in 2019 was a little over $799K compared to 2024’s $1.27M. This is almost 59% more so it would seem that buying a home and living in East Gwillimbury is a slam dunk no-brainer.