Here is our weekly update on the Edmonton real estate market. (Last week’s numbers are in brackets). For the past 7 days:
# New listings: 599 (632)
# Sales: 246 (243)
Ratio: 41% (38%)
# Price changes: 372 (286)
# Expired Listings: 134 (109)
# Canceled, withdrawn and terminated listings: 44 (52)
Net loss/gain in listings this week: 175 (228)
Active listings for single family homes: 2971 (2866)
Active listings for condos: 2301 (2246)
The slow creep in inventory continues…the increase still seems normal for this time of year even though the total number of listings is quite high.
I have been following this blog for the past year and I have found it a great source of information. This being said, I have noticed that comfree reports an additional 3000 listings that if included with the MLS summary may perhaps paint a more serious situation. When you comment on inventory, do you consider the comfree factor?
Also, I was wondering if a basket approach may be beneficial as well in the market analysis. It would be interesting to see the price changes monthly of a set basket of houses or sample set. I understand this may be difficult to establish as this is influenced by area and $/sqft.
Watching for Texas but Edmonton will always be home.
Now it is a matter of time…it certainly is comming down.
The spin that is put on the numbers coming out nowadays is laughable at best. The Edmonton home-investors assoc. aka EREB, is manipulating facts like there is no tomorrow.
E.g. “Jan 2008 was the second best year for number of houses sold on record” Hmmm…
Lies, Damn Lies and Satistics.
No one can predict the long term future but the hope that home sales would be based on anything but the fundamentals, that they would be decoupled as oil prices have is stunning.
The investors can decouple oil from fundamentals to make the Chinese and the Indians pay in the next 5 years or so but sickening rise in home prices in Edm cannot be substantiated unless you import 1M Chinese and Indians.
More predictions:
March 2008 will be below March 2007 prices and well below on sales.
Inventory to go sky high.
EREB stats will be skewed in the coming months as more sellers move out of Comfree and into EREB.
In Jan EREB sales/inventory ratio was 17% but Comfree was 5%
In a buyer’s market, Comfree will die.
EREB stats will be skewed in the coming months as more sellers move out of Comfree and into EREB.
In Jan EREB sales/inventory ratio was 17% but Comfree was 5%
In a buyer’s market, Comfree will die.
2008 – +5%
2009 – +10%
2010 – +12 – +15%
the rest is BS.
50 to 60% of the market (comfree or mls) is junk that will stay there forever… the good ones are still selling and will continue, what will hold the prices and even generate some increase this year.
Here’s the real deal:
2008 – -8%
2009 – -8%
2010 – -4%
Here’s the real real deal:
2008 – ▒▒%
2009 – ▒▒%
2010 – ▒▒%
And I know that for a fact.☺
I was looking at some charts regarding the last real housing correction in the Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver markets.
No matter what City you look at
the prices declined on average
25-30% before rebounding and it took roughly 3 years of declining prices for the rebound to occur.
This last year Edmonton fell about what 10%?
So far we are right on track. 10% Year 1, CHECK! Now 2008,2009 could be the remaining 20% what do you think?
Aaron,
let me know where you get these charts as I’ve been trying to find 30 or 40 years of historical data for ages.
First of all I would have to say that 30% down would be a collapse not a correction.
Secondly, without seeing the data, I would have to make an educated guess and say that kind of a move was inspired by runaway interest rates and/or the price of oil tanking and the associated job losses/rising bankruptcy rates and people walking away from their homes.
Not all corrections are created equal. If any of the above economic conditions were to appear suddenly again….you would probably right. That being said, we probably won’t be up or down more than 5% on the year come Dec., disappointing both the eternal optimists and eternal pessimists (but it does make for fun reading lol).
I’ll see if I can scan them the charts but it is interesting to note that the data from is from
4 different cities yet the results
are quite similar and the corrections occured at different time periods so it is kind of hard to blame interest rates.
Some occured in the early 80′s
some in the later 90′s.
I don’t think you can call it a collaspe because even though the market went down dramtically it took around 3 years in each case
for that to happen. More like a slow steady deflation.
It seems like thats what could be happening in Edmonton. A longterm slow descent of prices back to normal levels.
Bob Truman’s stats for Feb 1-21 are painting a less rosy picture. Price per square foot still dropping and Sales “lame and anemic at best”. Look’s like down %50 relative to Feb 2007 in both Condo’s and SFDs. March also looking to still be the first month where EREB is going to be forced to tell people that your home price growth has gone negative year over year. That should be a good press event to go into the summer buying season with.
Aaron,
All I’m getting at is large corrections of 30% usually have significant economic downturn behind them whether it’s high interest rates/price of oil tanking/recession/national energy program….and on and on and on. Price corrections always will affect different provinces at different times as they have their own local strength’s and weaknesses. Just look at AB. and SASK….50 years from now someone looking at historical data would be scatching their head at a 50-60 percent difference in fortunes between the two neighbours. The most important thing we should be getting out of stats isn’t that large price changes occur…..but what caused them, and that’s why I’de love to have the stats so I could compare economic conditions here, now to then.
wow, some of you are doing amazing work, that will be interesting to know, I will wait for your next post itchy.
Found this article on workingtogether.ca site:
http://www.workingtogether.ca/?p=86
“(early bird discounts) We WILL NOT be reporting these sales to the MLS system so that these sales don’t bring down the values of the buildings.”
Now this isn’t a slight against this condo conversion, but the point I want to make is that there are a number of condos like this happening that are not listed on MLS which in turn, creates the continued artificial inflation of condo prices. If these places where listed on MLS, there would be a lower average price and lower price per sq ft on condos.
Personally, through developments such as these, builders not using MLS, and private Investment firms trying to sell direct, I personally think the market is in far worse shape then the numbers MLS is posting. For example, the article above links to boldhomes.ca which has over 358 condo’s for sale just in the first 10 listings on their site.
(http://www.boldhomes.ca/current_listings.shtml)
As of right now I haven’t been able to find any of these condo’s on MLS.
If it was possible, and I do realize it isn’t, to have everyone on MLS, I think the market would be looking increasingly deflated then it currently does. Just listening to ads on the radio for discounts on new homes, the absolute crazy amounts of price reductions on comfree, and alot of quick flip condo conversions, the market is really all over the place and I think the weekly numbers are really only a very small portion of the big picture.
Just my $0.02
Saab,
Could not agree more. Also, I agree with Aaron. We’re going to be looking at reductions in the magnitude of 10-30% probably overall. And I disagree with Itchy that a 30% reduction isn’t possible without a negative economic event. I don’t think the housing prices have been run up because of the overall Alberta economic picture. The “fundamentals”. They’ve been run up on tremendous in-migration; with limited supply; and increased demand from people treating them as investments. But at least the waiting will soon come to and end. Once we get through March/April/May/June we’ll get a picture of consumer reaction to negative year-over-year price headlines; sales volume; and increased listings and inventory.
Aaron and cia,
Calgary, jan/08:
Single family avg = 455,297
Median = 410,000
Calgary, TODAY:
Single family avg = 463,060
Median = 422,000
If this is going down, please tell me which way is up.
I take it you’ve never heard of the term sales mix.
‘No name”,please put a name to your post so that we communicate easily.
Please see the reduced price/ sq ft…it is falling sine last June 2006.
Dear Pessimists: I guess you folks missed the boat and are dreaming of a catastrophic reduction in house prices then I’ll let you enjoy your dreams which will never come true under any possible scenario. I’ll talk to you mates in a year or two and see who was right. I recommend that you move to eastern Canada and catch the train there before it gets too late for you as well. Mark my word, the current plateau was expected and predicted and we are six months away from another ride once the new drilling season budget is out. Folks, the natural gas is above $9 today and going up every day. The construction of the new upgraders will start next year, the pipeline construction will start next year as well.
Regarding the upgrader jobs etc.
Anyone in skilled trades and other types of jobs can fly from any airport in Canada in/out of Edmonton for these jobs. On rotation.
No need to come there and buy R/E.
This is different. They didn’t fly all the labour in/out before. Would have been unheard of a few years ago.