The president of the Sarnia-Lambton Association of Realtors says they're still waiting for sales to increase as a result of interest rate cuts.
Jeremy Guerette said the average sale price remained steady at $529,000, but the number of sales and dollar volume dropped slightly in August.
"It kind of seems like this year is following our traditional pattern of real estate, which would be a busy spring, slower in the late summer and I guess if everything holds true, then maybe we'll see a pickup here in the fall as well," said Guerette.
He said interest rate drops haven't impacted sales much yet.
"That third drop, just the other day, maybe that will start to bring on some higher sales activity. It looks like that's the trend now with the rates coming down. So, hopefully the buyers will have some confidence in some lower costs associated with housing," said Guerette.
While the number of new listings also dropped, Guerette said buyers still have a significant amount of properties to choose from.
"We are at about five months inventory with about 600 listings on the market," he said. "If someone is thinking about buying, it's probably a great time, there's lots of inventory to look at."
Guerette said they've also experienced a decrease in bidding wars.
"Our list to sale ratio is sitting at about 97.5 per cent. I think at one point in time when we were seeing all of those bidding wars it was over 100 per cent on the average. So yes, definitely [there's] a little bit of room to negotiate and I think we'll continue to see that. In the spring we did see some multiple offers, so we may see a little bit of that again if things pick up in the fall, but as of now, not a ton of fighting over properties," Guerette said.
Listings spent about 22 days on the market in August.