Average selling price of city homes hits $300,000

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A recent rash of luxury-home sales has driven up the average selling price in Winnipeg by more than 10 per cent in the past year, according to a new report by Re/Max Canada.

In its 2016 Spring Market Trends Report released Thursday, the real estate company said the average selling price jumped from $273,906 in the first quarter of 2015 to $300,011 in the first quarter of this year.

And a big reason for that was the number of luxury homes — Re/Max defines a luxury home in Winnipeg as anything priced at more than $800,000 — that were sold between Jan. 1 and March 31.

The report said there were 19 such sales during the first three months of this year, compared with only seven in the same period last year.

Catherine Schellenberg, of Re/Max Professionals, said when more higher-priced homes are sold, that drives up the average selling price.

She said not only are there more luxury homes on the market this year, there are also more people looking to buy a higher-priced home. She cited one recent example in which she had more than 30 showings for a home in Waverley West that was priced at more than $1 million.

“There are a lot of people shopping luxury right now. A lot more than we’ve ever seen.”

She said many of the potential buyers she has encountered were medical or financial-industry professionals.

The Re/Max report said a combination of factors are helping to fuel the demand for homes in Winnipeg, including low interest rates, high employment levels, strong consumer confidence levels and an abundance of listings.

It said detached homes in the $250,000-to-$350,000 range are popular with move-up buyers this year, while first-time buyers are typically purchasing condominiums priced at between $130,000 and $250,000, or detached homes priced at less than $350,000.

Nationally, Re/Max says a shortage of inventory and intense competition among buyers has led to even bigger prices hikes in the country’s two hottest housing markets — Vancouver and Toronto. It says Vancouver’s average selling price jumped by 24 per cent to $1.1 million, while Toronto’s average price rose by 14 per cent to $675,492 from $594,827.

In other parts of the country, year-over-year price changes ranged from a decline of four per cent in St. John’s, Nfld., to an increase of 31 per cent in B.C.’s Fraser Valley.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca