New Brunswick home sales continued a slow and steady recovery in January, according to the province’s real estate board.

A total of 477 units were sold across the province last month, an increase of 6.5 per cent compared to one year earlier.

On a local level, sales were up 17.8 per cent in Greater Moncton to 205, and 15.7 per cent in the Northern and Valley Region to 96.

Saint John and southwestern New Brunswick saw 91 home sales, a drop of 1.1 per cent, while sales in the Fredericton region fell 14.1 per cent to 85.

“January continued the trend of a gradual recovery in demand that began in the second half of last year,” Mike Power, chair of the New Brunswick Real Estate Board, said in a news release.

“Sales and new listings have been on the rise in tandem, and while this is good news for the market in general it has also kept overall inventories from rising too rapidly, which have been moving sideways for the past several months.”

New listings were up just over nine per cent in January to 720, according to figures from the provincial real estate board.

That included 283 new listings in Greater Moncton, 164 in the Saint John region, 147 in the Fredericton area, and 126 in the Northern and Valley Region.

Active residential listings numbered 2,054 units at the end of January, which was down more than 10 per cent from a year earlier.

Months of inventory — the number of months it would take to sell current inventories at the current rate of sales activity — numbered 4.3, down from the long-run average of 9.5 months for this time of year.

The benchmark price for single-family homes was $284,300, a gain of 7.4 per cent on a year-over-year basis. The dollar value of all home sales in January was $141.7 million.

“While local markets may differ on the timing of their individual recoveries, our province is generally moving in a positive direction and is currently in a well-balanced position,” said Power.