May 2020 Stats for PEI*
Home Sales 🏡
Covid was the major factor in the country’s economy in May as the lockdown began to lift in Canada and PEI was no exception despite the tremendous work by the Chief Public Health office and the people of PEI doing their best to keep the virus under control. As the Summer continues it will be interesting to see how things turn out but there are positive signs in the real estate market as of today.
120 Homes were sold in PEI in May, that’s a large 40% drop from last year, but a sharp improvement from April when only 75 were sold and we were in the midst of the heavy COVID lockdown.
There were 252 new residential listings in May, another large drop (36%) from last may but an over 100% increase on April’s 113. This is a positive sign that will hopefully accelerate as we come into the busy summer season!
Active Listings & Months of Inventory 🏡
As of the end of May there were 703 active home listings on the Island. Down nearly 28% from May of 2019. Inventory was a problem before COVID came along already and the virus has compounded the problem. New listings of all types (residential, condo, commercial, farms, recreational) at a reasonable price move very quickly these days. Months of inventory has risen slightly to 5.9, which could be due to the slow down in people buying homes being more pronounced than the listings being available since it is a measure of how fast things would sell given current averages.
Average Price 🏡
And finally, in May the average home price was $264,787, which is up 9.2% from last year and shows evidence that despite everything else COVID has had little effect on actual prices. There is still great value in real estate and that is likely to continue.
See you next month!
