Here Are 3 Truths That Defy Common Sense.
December 2025 Update
It’s easy to get lost in the noise of the real estate market, with conflicting headlines and conventional wisdom often painting a confusing picture. But what I wanted to do is to drill down a little on areas just outside of Moncton, Dieppe and Riverview, to see how these areas are performing.
To cut through the clutter, I analyzed five years of raw market data, January 2020 through November 2025, to uncover surprising truths that challenge what we think we know about buying and selling homes.
1. More Than an Uptick: A Historic Price Explosion
The data shows that the recent housing market wasn’t just a period of growth; it was a historic price explosion. The Median Sale Price started the period at $106,500 in January 2020 and rocketed to a peak of $319,900 by March 2025. This represents a staggering 200% increase in just over five years. This level of extreme appreciation redefines the concepts of affordability and market dynamics for an entire generation of homebuyers.
2. The Inventory Paradox: More Listings Didn’t Mean Lower Prices
A fundamental rule-of-thumb in real estate is that when the number of homes for sale (inventory) increases, prices should stabilize or even decrease. The data initially seemed to follow this rule, as active listings hit a low point of just 816 homes in February 2022 during a period of intense price growth. However, a paradox emerged. Even as inventory recovered and climbed significantly—surpassing 1,500 listings by July 2025 and exceeding the starting point of 1,215 listings in January 2020—prices continued their aggressive upward acceleration. This trend defied classic supply-and-demand logic, indicating that overwhelming factors—such as historically low interest rates or shifts in pandemic-era housing preferences—were creating a demand curve that inventory struggled to satisfy.
3. The Winter Market Myth: Slow Sales Don’t Always Mean Big Discounts
The idea of a “winter slowdown” is partially true, according to the data. The number of homes sold consistently drops during the colder months. For example, a peak summer month like July 2020 saw 238 sales, while a slow winter month like December 2022 saw only 65 sales.
However, that’s only half the story. While market activity slows down, median sale prices do not always follow predictably. A more dramatic example occurred in January 2025. Despite a low sales count of just 101 homes, the Median Sale Price surged to an astonishing $270,000, proving how ineffective seasonal lulls can be in a hyper-inflationary market. This reveals a critical insight for buyers: in a powerfully appreciating market, the overall upward price trend can easily overpower seasonal lulls, making a significant winter bargain less of a guarantee than myth suggests.
Conclusion: What Does the Data Tell Us Next?
This five-year analysis reveals a market that repeatedly broke from convention. We saw a price boom of historic scale, a breakdown of the traditional relationship between inventory and price, and a more nuanced reality of the “slow” winter season.
As we look ahead, the data forces us to ask: which long-held real estate ‘rule’ will be the next to break?
