WHERE ARE WE HEADED NEXT?

Hey if I could answer THAT question I would be posting all the lottery numbers I think are going to win and see how successful that turned out. I get asked all the time just what is going on and what’s next? Simple answer is let’s wait and see. I can say with some certainty that what we have been seeing these past 15 months is more than likely to continue. Too many intangibles right now. Jobs. Inflation rate. Interest Rates. Insane dictator to the south. Moderating prices (but need just a little more moderation, please). General ennui in the market. It happens. This is not new. Last one ran for almost a full decade from 1989 to 1997. At the time the Chicken Littles of the world were screaming this is the end. Except it wasn’t. Quite the opposite. Things bounced back with a fury. How else to explain the madness of the last 12 years? Unprecedented price growth. Add in the pandemic and away you go. Fairly certain we won’t see the likes of that again. At least not in our lifetime. So now we are left with the process of more or less starting over. House prices still need to come down. Salaries need to go up. Cost of living needs to level off. It used to be that you could save and put together enough to buy a starter home. Fix it up with some sweat equity and re-sell for a handsome profit. Take that money and buy up. Wash, rinse and repeat until you could afford the home to raise your burgeoning family. Somewhere along the way that process got screwed up. There were young people that could afford and they were buying their step 2 or even 3 home with the help of Baby Boomer parents. So, they basically by-passed that scenario. But others couldn’t. House prices bloated and many were left on the sidelines wondering what the heck just happened. And they are still on the sidelines. That is what needs to change. The business needs a healthy influx of first-time buyers to get things moving again. Governments at all levels are parroting the need for “affordable housing”. Still waiting to see what that looks like. December 2025 in Scugog saw only 18 new listings bringing the active total to 56. There were 13 sales and the average sale price dipped to $786,240.00, a drop of 5%. But the big number that jumped out was the Months of Inventory at 4.3 which firmly put this into a buyer’s market. So that means sellers that have been steadfastly holding on to the belief that their tiny 3 bedroom bungalow really IS worth over a mill had better wisen up if they want to sell. Like the sellers did 5 years ago, the buyers are now wielding the power and they seem more than happy to wait until sellers get the message. That could take a while. There’s also a shakedown coming for the agents that jumped into the biz with a get rich quick attitude over the last 10 years. This could get interesting really fast. A lot of changes on the way, hopefully for the better for consumers.

Feel free to check out this story and more on my blog site at: https://slackie14.wixsite.com/buy-sell-and-more