The REAL Market Report: May 2025

Alright, I’m back!

The REAL Market Report for May 2025, my first blog post in a couple of months, isn’t going to blow any minds. The prevailing trends in the market have been oh so consistent with little to no change in most categories.

Here is the gist of the story: prices are extremely stable. Sales are extremely low. New listings are high and we continue to add inventory to the active listings stable.

I have added a new stat to my arsenal since the end of April, something of my own making, and I call it “expected sales”. Expected sales is designed to give us an idea of how many sales should occur in the coming month. It is based on the 10 year average, seasonally adjusted by the performance of the previous three months compared to their 10 year average.

If that was confusing, I apologize for my terrible explanation. It makes sense in my head and through 2 months, my formula for expected sales correctly predicted the exact number of sales in April and was only 2.1% off in May. A margin of error of 1% through 2 months is pretty spectacular.

I will reveal my prediction for sales in June, but you will have to read a little further to see it!

Alright let's get into the stats with a look back at the past few months as well.

I mentioned that prices have been extremely stable. The average sale price in London has not moved more than 2.6% all year. Since January, here are dollar figures:

$635,604

$641,490

$640,830

$652,745

$648,270

We can go all the way back to February in 2023 and prices have been no lower than $615k and no higher than $665k. The past three years have looked the exact same. Highest prices in the spring, then they tail off toward the end of the year and start ramping up again in January.

Last year I talked a lot about how amazed I was at the resilience of sales prices despite the sharp decline in actual sales. Well that is even more amazing in 2025 as sales numbers have actually gone down from where they were in 2024.

474 sales in May was only 62.92% of the 10 year average. 422 sales in April was 63.90% of the 10yr. 344 sales in March equals 52.38% of the 10yr. March was the low point, but a trend of low sales this year is going strong. We are on pace for around 4200 sales this year which would be half as many sales as 2021.

Considering how low sales are, and how stable prices are, I can offer a few conclusions:

Sellers are not desperate and there aren’t many “distressed” sales happening.

Affordability is not what is preventing buyers from purchasing.

The best explanation I have as to why sales are so low: economic and political noise. Unemployment is rising and our GDP numbers for Q1 of 2025 don’t really give an accurate reading on our country’s economic performance as of late. So it’s not for no reason that people are maybe a little nervous.

But these fears have a double effect on the market because most would be buyers are also sellers and if you can’t sell your house, you can’t buy.

Nice little segue into number of new listings which have continued to roll right along. 1396 new listings in May which is 119% of the 10yr average.

Now I have been putting a lot less stock in new listings as a stat as of late because so many homes are relisted multiple times. Agents relist a home at a lower price all the time so that it shows as a new listing and gets refreshed attention from buyers.

But new listings lead to active inventory, of which there is certainly no shortage. It has seemed like every month in 2025 so far we have hit a new “high” in the active listings category.

At the end of this past month we reached 2110 active listings available in London. That’s about 4.5 months of inventory which is a lot. You could definitely look at that as a negative statistic.

Or, you could look at that number and think “wow, there are a lot of people trying to sell their homes because they want to move and buy a new one”. Take your pick, optimist or pessimist.

Will any of this change at any point this year? I’m not sure, honestly. I really think things would have to take a sharp turnaround in the Canada/US economic arena and the likelihood of that happening is completely unpredictable. Thank you Donald.

Before I put a bow on this whole thing, I will gladly share my prediction for the number of sales that are going to happen in June!

The 10yr average prior to 2025 for June sales: 682.2. The performance compared to the 10yr average of the 3 months previously: 59.73%. That gives us 407.48 which we can round up to 408.

Well there you have it folks, it’s been a while and I hope to be more consistent with my writing. If you prefer videos, I post all of this stuff in short form on my Instagram. Just search my name and I’m sure you’ll be able to find me. See you next month!