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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Homes for $100,000 or less getting scarce in city market

By: Murray McNeill

Posted: 05/8/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

SINGLE-FAMILY homes priced at less than $100,000 are getting harder to find in Winnipeg and are as scarce as hen's teeth in the southern half of the city, new data show.

Only three per cent -- roughly 40 -- of the near-record 1,346 properties that sold last month through the Winnipeg Realtors Multiple Listing Service (MLS) sold for less than $100,000, the association said Monday.

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"Three per cent -- that's the lowest I've seen it," said its resident market analyst Peter Squire.

Squire said as recently as 2006, there were months when 25 per cent of all residential detached sales were for under $100,000.

"It's really in the last three years that we've started to see it get down to around 10 per cent. And last year, it was under 10 per cent."

He said in the southern half of the city, only one home sold for less than $100,000 during the first four months of this year -- a small, two-bedroom bungalow on Walker Street in Fort Rouge that sold for $95,000.

But during that same period, there were 25 MLS areas, both inside and outside the city, that recorded at least one such sale, Squire said. "There are still of few of them. But they're becoming few and far between."

Winnipeg houses have had double-digit price gains in seven of the last nine years.

The association also noted that in April, more homes sold for more than the list price than sold for less than list, with the average selling price being $280,000.

Last month was the second-best April on record for sales of existing homes through the Winnipeg MLS, and the best ever for dollar volume of sales.

The association said the 1,346 unit sales was a 17 per cent increase over April 2011's 1,148, when the flood-fighting effort put a damper on selling. And it was only nine units shy of the association's all-time April record set in 2008.

The dollar-volume total of $337.3 million was up 25 per cent over April 2011's total of $268.8 million.

The two most active price ranges were $200,000 to $249,999 and $250,000 to $299,999. Each accounted for about 20 per cent of the month's sales.

Last month's flurry left unit sales running four per cent ahead of last year's pace after the first four months of 2012 -- 3,829 versus 3,681. The dollar volume was 10 per cent ahead -- $926.4 million versus $839.3 million.

"So far so good sums up this year," said WR president Shirley Przybyl.

"It will be interesting to see where we go from here. But I still think the market is very strong. There are still lots of buyers out there."

She said the good news for buyers is that more properties are coming onto the market. Listings were up 17 per cent last month versus a year earlier.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 8, 2012 B4

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