Let’s take a few minutes and think of when Spring arrives. For gardeners it is June. For mountain bikers it’s April. For Wendy Starr, who was raised in Arizona, it is March. And for Real Estate it’s January. Before you stare at your monitor and whisper “has Lindsay Smith gone bonkers,” hear me out.

The last normal year we had for Real Estate sales was 2019. A quick history lesson will reveal that the market took a nosedive in 2017, after the “Foreign Buyer Tax” was implemented and sales were up and down until 2018. Then things bounced with bidding wars, over asking price sales. In March 2020 we had a thing called the pandemic and things went black for 4 months and then we saw the fastest rise in activity and sales we have ever seen. The past few years have been turbulent ones with 2019 being the most recent year with a normal market. Let’s break down what happened in 2019.

Monthly sales and listing inventory Dec/18 – June/19 for all of Durham Region.

Month/Year	SALES	HOMES FOR SALE
December 2018	446	1,289
January 2019	508	1,378
February 2019	585	1,503
March 2019	839	1,746
April 2019	1,075	2,005
May 2019	1,176	2,309
June 2019	1,093	2,320

One of the first things I look at when I am breaking down activity levels is what is called the Absorption Rate. This shows how long it would take to sell all of the homes listed in months. In January, it would take just under 3 months to sell all homes. (Assuming no more were listed for sale.) In March it would take 2 months to sell all inventory and in May all homes would be sold in under 2 months. What this metric shows is that in January with 1,300 homes for sale Buyers had less choice and started to compete for homes in a low inventory market. There were 21 homes sold in January for full price or over asking. (Remember during this period bidding wars were very uncommon.) If you were a Buyer in May you had more homes to view, however there were more than double the amount of Buyers looking at the same homes for sale. For simplicity, in February a Buyer had a selection of 1,503 homes for sale and in May the selection increased to 2,309. The important fact was the proportion of Buyers in February jumped from 585 in January to 1,176 in May.

What this means is that the Sellers who placed their home on the market in January or February, had the upper hand. They had fewer other Sellers competing for the Buyer pool and had more control over price and terms when offers were submitted. We only have to review January 2023, the first month after a very challenging year with values slipping and mortgage rates increasing to notice that over 1/3 of all homes sold, sold for full price, or over asking.

My thoughts on when to sell have always been this – “the best months to sell are January, February, and March because when homes sell in these months the move out dates are June, July and August. Just in time for a family to get settled before the school year begins.”

In a perfect world, based on reviewing a normal spring, the best time to sell your home in in January and the best time to be a Buyer is April and May.

To get the ball rolling, I can be reached at lindsay@buyselllove.ca or 905-743-5555.

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