Near-Record Home Sales In June

The Saint John region posted near-record home sales in June as the housing market continues to recover from the pandemic downfall.

A total of 268 homes were sold throughout the month — the second-best June on record, according to the Saint John Real Estate Board.

“It’s nice to see the recovery happening,” said Corey Breau, president of the board, in a phone interview Wednesday.

“The past few months, our sales were down. We’re starting to see sales return to over last year. We’re up 12 sales over June last year, which is a small increase of 4.7 per cent, but it’s nice to see an increase.”

Breau said the number of new listings remain below pre-COVID levels but are continuing to recover.

Figures show 375 new residential properties were listed in June, down just over eight per cent year-over-year.

“This was pretty good considering what we’ve been dealing with the last few months,” said Breau, who noted overall inventory is down 39 per cent compared to the same time last year.

The imbalance between demand and supply helped push the average price of home sales in June past the $200,000 level for the first time in history.

But Breau cautioned that figure only looks at the June sales and not the year as a whole.

“Year-over-year, we are sitting at an average price of $188,000, which is only about a five per cent increase, which is healthy. To see prices rise the way they did in June, it probably won’t continue,” he said.

Months of inventory — the number of months it would take to sell current inventories at the current rate of sales activity — numbered 3.4 at the end of June, well below the long-run average of 10.1 months for this time of year.

“We’re most definitely in a seller’s market right now,” said Breau.

The Saint John Real Estate Board covers the southern part of New Brunswick to the U.S. border in St. Stephen, and includes the counties of Saint John, Kings, Charlotte and portions of Queens County.