September continued a four-year run of over 1,000 MLS® sales for the month, according to the Winnipeg Real Estate Board.
Despite the strength of the MLS® in September, WREB president Walter Boni said there is good news ahead for people wanting to test the housing market.
Boni said a positive development going into October is the increase in the number of listings available to potential home buyers.
“Our active listings are up 15 per cent over last year so there is definitely a greater supply of homes to choose from,” he added.
The WREB said the strong September results have “helped propel the first three-quarters of 2006 into new uncharted territory.”
Both sales and dollar volume for 2006 are ahead of previous years. MLS® dollar volume sales are just shy of $1.5 billion with a full quarter remaining in the year and MLS sales are fast approaching the 10,000 unit sales mark.
The WREB said there were 9,846 unit sales up to the end of September and dollar volume stood at $1.49 billion.
In comparison, by the end of September 2005, dollar volume had only reached $1.3 million and sales had only hit 9,709 units.
Dollar volume for this September was up seven per cent to $153.9 million when compared to the same month last year.
Although September MLS® sales actually fell two per cent when compared to the same month in 2005, year-to-date sales are still one per cent higher than a year ago.
“This is the first time in many months when the percentage spread between dollar volume and sales dropped below 10 per cent or wasn’t in double digits,” said Boni.
“So, prices may be starting to moderate somewhat. However, we still had a home sell in September for over $1 million and a condominium sell for just under $600,000.”
The three residential-detached price ranges dominating the market in September were between $100,000 and $199,999, accounting for 55 per cent of all MLS® sales. The $70,000 to $99,000 price range was a respectable fourth with 13 per cent of total sales.
Last month, 45 per cent of homes sold at or above their list price.
The average days on the market for a residential-detached listing was 29, three days shorter than last month and four days off the pace in September 2005.