The hot real estate market in most of Nova Scotia doesn’t leave much room for rumination if you’re a buyer.
“If you went back to 2014, it would have taken us 13 months to sell out of everything we have on the market,” said Matt Honsberger, the president of the Nova Scotia Association of Realtors. “Today it would take us six months.”
The market has been particularly bullish in the Halifax/Dartmouth region. There were about 2,600 MLS transactions between January and May, about 200 more than the same period last year, representing a seven per cent spike.
“We would typically track around a two to three per cent (increase) in what we would have called strong years before, so we’ve seen a very significant strength come into the market this year,” Honsberger said in an interview Thursday from his Halifax office.
“I’d say we’re talking about a 2019 story here. This is not something I would have said we would have been talking about a year ago. Maybe demand was building at that point but the demand has really come to the market this year.”
While the Halifax area tops the charts, Honsberger said most of Nova Scotia is seeing higher prices and more transactions, with the exceptions being Cape Breton and Yarmouth.
“Generally the further you get from Halifax, the lesser prices are. And that just seems to be a reality in the province.”
While location is usually the watchword in the real estate world, this year demographics appear to be playing a larger role.
A recent study by the real estate organization Point2 Homes zeroed in on the effect of Canadian seniors increasingly fleeing home ownership in favour of rentals or retirement homes.
In its analysis of the Atlantic Canadian market, Point2 Homes concluded Cape Breton Regional Municipality, which has the highest percentage of people over 55 at 42 per cent, had the lowest average home prices.
Meanwhile cities such as Halifax and St. John’s, which have comparatively young populations, boast the highest home prices in all of Atlantic Canada.
As the baby boom generation ages, Homsberger said, an increasing number are converting the equity of their houses in order to travel or pass on their wealth to their kids. That’s cranked up the rental market, particularly in cities like Halifax.
“Certainly we’ve seen a lot of condos being built (in Halifax) but most of the time when I’m looking at the cranes in the sky, I’m looking at multi-rentals.”
He said real-estate hungry younger buyers are affecting the market in other ways.
“The millennial has proven to be someone that is quite interested in buying a home and owning a home,” he said
“The change we’ve seen this year is that people have, for a long time, looked for the home that’s completely ready for sale. ... And this year we’re seeing inventory move that needs a little bit of work or is more of an entry level type of home and so it’s clear the millennials are interested in entering the homeownership time of their lives, they’re willing to look at other options rather than just pristine and perfect.”
