Hamilton housing still 'one of the tightest markets in Canada'

Not satisfied with the record it set in April, the local housing market had yet another record-setting month in May, with 1,810 properties sold in Hamilton and Burlington, according to the latest stats collected by the realtors' board.

That was 9.4 per cent more sales than the same month last year, and more than 100 over April's 1,699 sales record.

"To say that we've had a busy spring market would be an understatement," said Ross Godsoe, CEO of the Realtors Association of Hamilton-Burlington. 

The scales are tipped in favour of sellers and have been for a while. If homes continue selling at this pace, it would take only two months to sell all the available houses on the market. Godsoe called Hamilton and Burlington "one of the tightest markets in Canada." 

The median sales price for all homes sold was $384,950 in May, up 11 per cent from May 2014. 

The biggest price jumps out of the 14 sub-regions in the RAHB numbers were in Dundas and Glanbrook, with 17.3 per cent and 27.8 per cent jumps, respectively. The four Hamilton quadrants (west, centre, east, Mountain) each registered average price gains of more than 10 per cent over the year.

Average prices tend to reflect general market trends but outlier expensive or inexpensive sales on either end can skew the numbers for a particular month.