Here is our update on the Edmonton real estate market. (Previous week’s numbers are in brackets). For the past 7 days:
New listings: 538 (528, 476, 599)
# Sales: 262 (296, 286, 293)
Ratio: 49% (56%, 60%, 49%)
# Price changes: 448 (466, 480, 554)
# Expired Listings: 552 (608, 162, 270)
# Canceled/withdrawn/terminated listings: 33( 47, 63, 65)
Net loss/gain in listings this week: -309 (-418, -35, -29)
Active listings for single family homes: 3999 (4007, 4206, 4236)
Active listings for condos: 2705 (2708, 2914, 2910)
Happy 08/08/08!!! An infinitely lucky day I’d say! No wonder it’s so gorgeous out in Edmonton today…
Anyway, here are my thoughts on the numbers this week. First off, in two weeks we’ve had over 1000 expired listings. That is a HUGE number. I expect we are going to see a lot of listings coming back on the market for significantly reduced prices in the next few weeks – I’ve already noticed quite a few.
Also, that is 4 weeks in a row where we’ve had a net loss in listings. We haven’t even seen two weeks in a row of net loss this year until now. Is there a trend afoot?
Go out, enjoy the incredible weather and take in the Folk Festival, Cariwest, or cheer on the Weekend to End Breast Cancer participants. There is lots to see and do in the river city this weekend.
who cares about weekly reports? real estate is dead in alberta
The media is on it now……
http://watch.ctv.ca/news/latest/housing-slump/#clip72706
Edmonton is still 25% over valued
Tony, if you don’t care, why post? Why read the blog? Just a troll?
Tony, obviously you do since you’re here checking them out.
I enjoy following your blog! The Bend Oregon real estate market continues to be slow. It looks like a good time to buy in your area.
Oh, it’s going to get better yet.
Guaranteed!
I really get tired of the doom and gloom comments posted, you would think the economy is crashing down around us. If you are waiting for a 400k home to sell for 300k, you will be waiting and wasting your money renting for many years to come. Real estate affordability changed forever in 06/07. This is a great time for first time buyers or move up buyers to shop around and get the most for their money.
Brad you sould read squids post at 4:26 pm yesterday on the bubbleblog to see whats going on.It seems to me that he has it figured out pretty good.Lower shelter costs are very good news to me, certainly not gloom and doom but very very good news, my family simply can not afford a home at these prices and we have a decent income of 75,000. After paying 1300 month for our 2 bedroom apartment we have about 3,000 left for day care, food for four, RESP for the kids,alberta health, we were considering buying a condo this fall but we have no way possible of saving a 5 percent downpayment.
The word from the economists now is that Edmonton has another 25% to drop. That makes that $400,000 SFH more like $300,000.
Sounds good to me.
Brad,
Should I buy now or be priced out forever?
Brent:
Prices have already droped 15% or so since peak last year. Another 25% would mean about 36% below peak. Show me a place in the states even that’s dropped that much yet! Wouldn’t you say our economic conditions are a tad better than the worst of the markets down there?
Spark a lighter and grab a menthol slim! I’m surprised no one has mentioned this, but word on the street is two large homebuilders are close to going in receivership (rumor is TU by years end!). I’m not going to name names, but if this does happen I wonder what it’ll do to market sentiment!
According to the economist boys, it’s another 25% drop from todays prices, not the top of the bubble. Really though, 25% isn’t that much considering they went up a 125% in 4 short years.
I guess it all depends when you bought whether your going to be bleeding or not.
Thanks for the stats as always. As we are looking at selling in very early spring 2009 (we will be building a new house, and plan to sell before we start building), the trends are alarming. I found this analysis to be really interesting on Bob Truman’s site…you guys are so busy already, I am sure, but I would love to see these kind of numbers for the Edmonton area…especially Sherwood Park…
http://www.bobtruman.com/blogs/bob_truman/archive/2008/08/04/the-index.aspx
One should be mindful as to who is concocting those negative predictions in the west. They are people who live, work and own properties in the east. The so called financial, economic and real estates gurus from Central Canada know that their region is sinking like a rock and therefore their property prices as well, but they are trying hard to drag the west down to improve the relative value of their own investments. The real estates boards in the west should challenge those envious gurus to send their best developers here to prove that they are able to develop and sell properties at lower prices than what they are selling today without going belly up like all the other businesses in their region. Unfortunately there are readers who are so gullible as to swallow whatever crap those gurus throw up. Wake up. The west rules from now on and all the wishing and hoping by those gurus from Central Canada is not going to change a thing. As their economy tanks, so will their property prices, but our economic fundamentals are as strong as can be, and there is no turning back. Carolyn Kwan of Merrill Lynch, eat your heart out!
Unfortunately the so called “think tanks” are based in Central Canada and so are the media giants. Does the EREB or other similar organizations in the west have their own experts to analyse the situation truthfully and without bias to debunk the lies from Central Canada? It is sad that as soon as the west gets ahead, the east has to do everything to reverse it, and if they scream long and loud enough people will be influenced and the situation will change, not as a result of economic fundamentals, but sadly as a result of propaganda. Sad, so sad.
Great Points Matt. For sure, Merrill Lynch is going to stake it’s corporate reputation on being envious of Western Canada. Couldn’t be based on any economic facts or solid research. Yeah, that must be the case. Envy and bitterness.
Wow. I so love Uber-Paranoid-Positive-Albertan’s. The whole world should bow down and worship us because we have the Oilsands. And we need to make sure we lock up all our revenue from those Oilsands so that no other person in any of the other Provinces or Territory gets a single cent.
Real Progressive. Way to show the intellect of the province.
Matt,
Are you really that delusional?
Have you noticed that property values in Alberta have already dropped? While values in Eastern Canada are just starting to peak.
You’re attacking the source instead of the points that they are making. Doesn’t make you look very credible.
Does anyone know good information sites that have up to date stats on inter province migration numbers and current vacancy rates for edmonton? I think these 2 factors will help identify the amount of surplus in the area because in order for all this new construction to get eaten up people need to be entering the market from outside of the market otherwise you will just have people selling a place in edmonton to move into another one in the area and this will be a one for one ratio that will not eat up excess inventory. I am no expert by any means but reading about other places that had big real estate booms due to solid economic factors when construction caught and surpassed demand it left high vacany rates and problems with house pricing occured (Las Vegas for example)I would love to hear any thoughts that you have on this and tell me if I am out of whack with this post. I think that this is an excellent web site thanks for creating this Sara and Sheldon and I look forward to your thoughts on this post. I have also heard that there may be an increase in interest rates in the new year a trend that usaully follows a U.S. presidential election. do you think this will happen.
Ha ha…you beat me to it Nate. Actually GTA prices haven’t started to fall yet, listings are up though so it’s just a matter of time. As far as Alberta, our bubble has burst.
The oil sands don’t mean diddley regarding the price of real estate in Alberta. 90% of the temporary jobs here were in the construction industry (building houses) and that’s all but disappeared.
“90% of the temporary jobs here were in the construction industry (building houses) and that’s all but disappeared.”
Haha! What a hasty generalization Brent. But of course it’s all but disappeared no one is building anything else right now. We don’t have any commercial building going on and we don’t have any industrial construction either. All these temporary jobs are gone now that houses are sitting, poor temporary residential construction workers have to go back home because there are no jobs for them in Edmonton.
O and Nate, I’m posting on this blog for the first time. If you have previous postings please draw me to them so that I may know fully what you stand for. Thanks.
Interesting article in today’s Globe and Mail.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080811.whousing0811/BNStory/Business/home
Some recent past perdictions from our real estate industry.
http://www.greaterfool.ca/2008/08/10/bubblicide/#comments
Actually Garth took that from Bear Claws… alberta real estate watch site, sorry Bear Claw.
http://albertarealestatewatch.blogspot.com/
Can someone post the link to this study that points to another 25% drop from August 1, 2008???
Sounds like an interesting read…
Inflation follows boom cycles and decreases the gap in housing affordability (**if wages rise in tandem with inflation). Prices can go down but the overall trend has just about everything going up.
But in a dream world, beary beary far away, if the average HH income rises 3% per annum and prices drop another 25% from today’s prices…
…everyone will be living in mansions and you’ll be able to afford a 2000 sq. ft. bungalow working part-time at Tim Hortons.
And remember, as a previous poster indicated, going up 50% in value is not the same as going down 50% in value. In dollar terms that is.
I think most would find the Globe article a welcome relief – how do you expect this higher than normal inventory to be reduced if they keep building houses at the pace they were last year?
Also:
Royal Bank of Canada assistant chief economist Paul Ferley also drew a sharp distinction between the health of the Canadian and U.S. housing sectors.
He said the bank is forecasting that Canadian starts will fall an average 5.8 per cent this year and 14.8 per cent in 2009. But these declines “represent a modest pace of slowing in contrast to the plummet in activity in the U.S., where starts fell 26 per cent last year and are expected to decline another 30 per cent this year before modestly recovering 5 per cent in 2009.”
Considering they are looking at Canada wide stats, I think that should bode well for us Albertans over time….
As always though – stay tuned!
Matt:
“The west rules from now on and all the wishing and hoping by those gurus from Central Canada is not going to change a thing.”
The only thing that would have made your comment even more intellectual would have been adding “The west rulez and the east drools!”.
Xyloph wrote:
“Prices have already droped 15% or so since peak last year. Another 25% would mean about 36% below peak. Show me a place in the states even that’s dropped that much yet!”
Hmmm…okay.
http://themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
As of May 2008, Las Vegas was down 28.4%, Miami down 28.3%, Phoenix down 26.5% – and those are just in ONE YEAR. From their peak, a lot of the most “bubbly” markets have now fallen more than 35%.
But Alberta’s different, right?
Sorry, couldn’t get a direct link to the post on the Greenspan Mess blog. Just scroll down to Tuesday, July 29th postings…
Orson:
From their peaks, so far have dropped:
Vegas: 35%
LA: 25%
Miami: 30%
Tampa: 25%
Phoenix: 30%
Of the worst there isn’t one that exceeds a 35% drop yet.
Is Alberta different? I guess maybe we’re exactly the same… except for 8-10% of existing mortages are not in default here (it’s more like 1%) like they are in the above listed cities.