Good News, Bad News….Feels normal to me
The Realtor’s Association of Edmonton posted the monthly results for August this afternoon, before their press release which I assume will come out tomorrow. Needless to say we got the stats here for you as quickly as we could, we’ll post more analysis and the press release from the board tomorrow.
Market stats for August are a mixed bag. Average sales price was down a notch – I don’t think we’re done there yet, but it definitely was better than what many market detractors were predicting.
New listings to sales ratio is down to 30%. That’s low even if you take into account the practice of re-listing (the Association is looking into changes to curb that practice). It becomes difficult though if you have clients like I had in July who listed their property and days later had a baby and we basically had to terminate the property and bring it back on when things were more settled for them. Once the particulars are worked out we’ll see a more accurate figure there – hopefully.
Sales were low, even if seasonal factors are considered they were low compared to previous years. However the last 4 days of August and the first four days of September seem to be busier than all of August (based on calls about, traffic to and offers on listings, as well as conversations with other Realtors).
Multiple offers are by no means done but are definitely the exception not the norm. Offers that do come in tend to be below list and with conditions. There is really a mixed bag of stuff going on – some areas have 20 months of supply, some have 2 months supply. Some of our listings have flown off the shelves with multiple offers and some are just sitting (depending on price range and type of product). Lots of properties are pending, subject to the sale of another property. This feels like a normal market except for the high inventory.
Some will say more inventory is coming, yet the total today is already down from the end of August (today’s estimate is down to 8700 on MLS). Are we going to see tons of expired listings? Likely fairly soon we’ll start to see a lot more listings not selling during the term of their MLS listing contract (a normal market occurrence).
It is clear from what I’ve seen that the rate of new listings coming on the market has abated significantly. That doesn’t mean it can’t surge or won’t grow. It simply means it has slowed down.
I think the chart below helps put things into perspective a little bit. Maybe you won’t get now what you could have in May or June, but you can still get significantly more than last year.
Blanket predictions are almost impossible now on the entire market. Somy recommendation is: get professional advice for your specific circumstance whether you are buying or selling.
