Every August I get the same question, usually at a barbecue: "Is now a terrible time to sell?" The honest answer is that it isn't terrible — it's just different from the market most people still have in their heads. Prices are up. So is the amount of competition you're up against. And the real risk in a deal has quietly moved somewhere most people aren't looking.
The numbers
July's figures for our area:
309 homes sold — essentially flat year over year, though sales have picked up over the past couple of months.
$658,437 average sale price — up a healthy 7.4%.
4.9 months of inventory — against a long-run July average of 3.3.
Two things are true at once here, which is what makes this market confusing to read from the outside. Prices are genuinely holding up. But unsold inventory keeps accumulating — 1,500 active listings — and as board president Luca Andolfatto put it, "new listings recorded the fourth highest July on record and pushed up overall inventories, remaining above average levels for this time of year."
Worth noting, because it looks contradictory at first glance: new listings were actually down 4.6% year over year, at 682. They were still the fourth-highest July on record in absolute terms, and with sales flat, the homes that don't sell keep stacking up. That's how inventory rises even in a month when fewer new listings came out.
What that actually means if you're buying
More inventory is a genuine gift. You can take a second viewing, get the inspection you want, and write a considered offer instead of a panicked one. Just don't over-correct into assuming everything will sit — a well-priced, well-presented home in a good pocket still moves fast, and I've had buyers this summer win in multiple offers and beat competition to a house before it formed.
The strategy has changed, not disappeared. Be patient across the market as a whole, and decisive on the specific house that's right.
The risk nobody mentions: the domino chain
Here's what's genuinely different this year. Far more buyers now need to sell their own home before they can close — the sale-of-buyer's-property condition. On one page of an agreement it looks like a small caveat.
I've spoken with two colleagues recently who each had a listing sold conditional on their buyer selling, and it turned out their buyer wasn't the only link. In one case there were four sets of buyers in the chain. In the other, six. If one of them can't make their end work, everything behind it unwinds.
If you're selling, that's worth understanding before you accept the strongest-looking offer on the table — because the strongest-looking offer isn't always the most likely to close.
What to do about it
Whether you're buying or selling this fall, it comes down to the same thing: know your own number before you're standing in someone else's chain. Not a guess or a neighbour's opinion — a current read on what your home would realistically sell for in this market, today.
If that's useful to you, I'm happy to put one together. Request a free home evaluation — no pressure, no obligation to list, ever. Or just reply and ask me a question. That's genuinely fine too.
— Kim Purcell, REALTOR®, Sutton Group Masters Realty
