P.E.I. home prices levelling off, August statistics show
CBC
P.E.I. house prices continued to rise through the spring of 2022 after interest rates started to go up in February, but began to level off in the summer.
Statistics released by the P.E.I. Real Estate Association put the benchmark price of a single family home at $372,700 in August. That is 15 per cent higher than in February, but a slight drop from July, when the price peaked at $374,100.
Nationally, prices are down 22 per cent since February.
Sales are also down since interest rates began to rise after years of stability in the low single digits.
Sales were 4.0 per cent in February of this year than they were in February 2021.
That turned around sharply in March, and monthly sales have been down double digits every month since except for May. From February to August, the number of homes sold each month went down 13.4 per cent.
New listings on P.E.I. have been up and down from month to month during that time. In total, from February to August, they are up 3.5 per cent.
With more listings and fewer sales, the number of months of inventory on the market is climbing back up after hitting very low levels in 2021.
That's the figure that estimates how many months it would take to sell every home listed, at the current rate of home sales, if no new listings were coming onto the market.
Months of inventory numbered 4.9 at the end of August, up from the 3.2 months recorded in August of last year.
That is still well below the 7.8 months that's average for this time of year.