It’s November and we’re still in the middle of the Fall market. Last week was a normal Fall market week with a fair number of new homes coming on the market. So what happened this week? Why have there been so few new listings?

Well, if you’re a buyer looking for a certain style of home in a certain price range in a certain location, you’re probably thinking that this week is no different from any other week and that there are never very many new listings. This is understandable. The supply of homes in central Toronto is limited, which is one of the reasons prices have increased steadily over the past 15 years.

But if you’re an agent looking at the market as a whole, you’ll have noticed a difference this week. There have been far fewer new listings this week than in recent weeks. I don’t think this means that the market has changed. There ARE other possible explanations, you know. One theory is that most people who list in the Fall decided to so in the Spring or Summer.  Since it’s best to list when the market is most active, their plan was to list some time after Labour Day (when everyone is back from their summer holidays) and before the end of October (so they have enough time to sell and close before everyone gets busy with the holidays). As a result, most of the people who were planning on selling in the Fall have already listed their homes for sale.

There will still be new listings, just as there always are, but chances are that there will be fewer than there have recently been. Homes that come on the market from now until the end of November will likely belong to people who have just recently bought a new home. They’re now busy getting their current homes ready for market. As we get closer to the holidays, the number of new listings will decrease even further. There will still be new listings, but very few. This will continue until mid to end January, when we’ll start to see a gradual increase in the number of new listings coming on the market, but as usual, the largest number of homes will come on the market in the Spring market, which is usually from March to about May.

Despite the scarcity of new listings, remember that you’re only looking for one home and that home can come on the market at any time so don’t despair!