Hot n Cold: Brantford’s Real Estate Market August 2024

“How’s the Market?” Isn’t exactly a simple question right now. There are different segments in Brantford’s Real Estate Market that are doing very different things.

This is why I can’t just paint the whole city of Brantford with the same brush. Different properties, price ranges and neighbourhoods are all moving at different paces.

All my convos with clients are different based on what they are looking to buy or sell. If I gave my clients selling an 800k detached home the same selling strategy I’m giving the ones that are selling a $600k detached home we would most likely have two very different results.

Measuring these segments by “Months of Inventory” is a very intuitive way to figure out what pace each are moving at. The larger the Months of Inventory, the slower that particular segment is moving.

The condo market is taking a big hit. It can mainly be contributed to the increase in supply of affordable homes in the same price range.

This means that these similarly priced detached homes are eating up the market share of first-time home buyers in the Brantford area that would normally be gravitating towards condos in a hot sellers market.

Townhouses would be another group of properties here in Brantford that would be targeted as “entry-level” houses. Unfortunately a lot of this inventory are newer builds which were purchased at higher price points during the peak of the market. This means that there isn’t as much breathing room or padding for the owners to sell at current market values.

The Brantford townhouse market under $600k is still moving relatively well, but there could be an opportunity to grab a deal for a property above that price mark that has been sitting on the market for a long time.

This is probably the coldest part of Brantford’s real estate market. Anything over $1 Million is seeing very stagnant buyer activity as affordability continues to be an issue. A conventional mortgage would require at least 20% downpayment on anything over that price point, which would definitely limit the buyer pool for these homes.

Since there are so many of these homes in one particular neighbourhood in Brantford (West Brant) the supply is heavily diluted and buyers have a lot more time to make decisions.

The one segment of the Brantford real estate market that is still thriving is the listings under $600k. With days on market ranging between 1.6 months to 2.2 months this is still very much a sellers market.

With affordability still a large issue affecting the buyer activity, it’s still very important to make sure sellers in this range are putting their best foot forward in their marketing.

By taking the time to analyze what’s happening in the market relevant to what my clients are looking to do, it gives me the ability to develop a custom strategy to use to get the job done for them. If we are headed into a competitive market with multiple offers, then we need to prepare for that. If it’s going to be a longer game, or if we need to find a way to stand out amongst the comparables, we prep for that instead.

Preparation is the key to not sitting on the market for much longer than the average (comparable) home in Brantford, or losing out on offer after offer because you aren’t recognizing the patterns for that market segment.

With information being available faster and in more abundance than ever before, the changes in Brantford’s real estate market segments can happen much faster, and being able to adjust to these changes helps me get my clients to the end-goal faster.