Halifax market: Hot or not?

Halifax, as we know, has pockets of urbanization popping up around the city. New restaurants are opening up and many current buildings are seeing facelifts. The North End and parts of the West End are becoming homes to funky and up and coming restaurants. This is creating more foot-traffic in the city and more desire to live closer to all the action. The Halifax market is thriving!

The Halifax market in 2016 & 2017

At the end of 2016 and early 2017, we started to see signs that the housing market was on the rise. This was hard to notice at first since it had had been a buyer’s market for years and years before that, and there was an ample number of unsold properties available for buyers. But, within the past few years, we are down to the lowest it has been in approximately 5 years. There is no sign that it is slowing down anytime soon!

A recap on 2018

While the end of 2018’s home sales declined, they did not convey what happened in the real estate market throughout the rest of the year. When looking at 2018, we see that it was one of the strongest years thus far for the Halifax market. 252 homes in the HRM were sold in December, which was a 17.6 per cent year-over-year decline compared to 2017. But throughout all of 2018, the HRM saw 5,927 homes sold. This was an increase of 6.1 per cent in home sales, helping make 2018 one of the strongest years for homes being sold in the province since 2007.

In the HRM, we saw prices of homes drop in December compared to previous years, like 2017. The average price of a home in Halifax was $297,599 for the month of December. This was a 1.7 per cent year-over-year decrease! However, when we look at the whole year, we see that prices of homes increased compared to 2017. This made the average price of a house in Halifax $302,228 during 2018, which is 1.9 per cent higher than in 2017.

What’s in store for 2019?

Given the overall trends that we saw in 2018, we can expect that the Halifax market will continue to stay strong in 2019. However, with the recent slowdown in December we may see a more modest growth in the market for the first part of 2019.

If you’ve been thinking about buying or selling this new year, get in touch with us here or feel free to stop by our office. We would be happy to help you make a game plan this year!