Here is our update on the Edmonton real estate market. (Previous week’s numbers are in brackets). For the past 7 days:
New listings: 297 (321, 356, 430)
# Sales: 169 (162, 146, 155)
Ratio: 57% (50%, 41%, 36%)
# Price changes: 347 (321, 357, 376)
# Expired Listings: 139 (231, 150, 578)
# Canceled/withdrawn/terminated listings: 26 (36, 47, 47)
Net loss/gain in listings this week: -37 (-108, 13, -350)
Active listings for single family homes: 3200 (3188, 3236, 3228)
Active listings for condos: 2158 (2177, 2219, 2221)
Sales activity has picked up a bit closer to the end of the month – there have been 856 sales so far, which could put us around 950 for the month, but that is still below average for November. The overall average residential sale price is still holding steady at $318k, single family homes are up slightly to $364k, and down to $231k for condos.
All this activity is fairly normal for November, except for the number of sales. One thing for certain, price per square foot continues to decline, so buyers are getting more for their money.
Don’t forget to check out the Edmonton Condo blog for more stats on Edmonton Condos!
I have a theory that the low sales are not due to the economy or the time of year – it is actually because of the new MLS website. Is anyone else extremely frustrated by it?
It takes me twice as long to view half as many properties because I spend all of my time watching the “loading”… “loading”… “loading” every time I move or zoom in. And that’s if it works at all – sometimes my search will return zero properties until I have refreshed it about five times. Taking a very small sample (me), may not be representative of the population, but I spend WAY less time on MLS than I did before because the website is too inconvenient, too time-consuming and too annoying. Can we bring back the old website already?
I agree!
The new website is extremley frustrating and I would demand changes before paying a listing agent to post on it or get a reduction in realtor fees. The house down the street had a for sale sign in front of it for almost two weeks before I could find it on MLS. It is there now but it is in the wrong area of community. I am looking at houses in Magrath but you can’t type in Magrath and go to the community in Edmonton as it goes just to the city of Magrath. Hiting Alberta and then zooming in is time consuming and frustrating. I am in the IT game. I don’t design but I do audit. The group who desgined and implemented this should be fired. It was not tested properly and definately does not meet end user needs and goals. This is the owners fault! However, I bet the developers tested it themselves and as they know how to use it were able to show the Canadia realeste board the way it works using workarounds or insider knowledge and not using a non-realtor looking for a house. This is not best practices and is akin to the fox guarding the hen house. Did anyone who is not a realtor or in the business test this for capacity, capabilities, and most importantly userability? Probably not.
That being said, I don’t think the lack of sales is because of the website. Houses sold before the internet and sales were declining before this version of realtor.ca went live. It is a pice of junk and realtors should be ashamed. However, the market has a long way to go down yet and even a great, faster, and more usable mls or realtor.ca website won’t help!
Thanks stroz,
I guess my sarcasm wasn’t obvious. House sales are definitely dropping for reasons other than the website.
Did realtor.ca ever look at realtor.com? I really like that website. Filtering your search for square footage is very useful but they forgot to include it in the new MLS site.
wow! 57% sales ratio! It’s almost a seller’s market again!!!!!
Try a different internet browser. I was having the same loading problem until I tried a new browser. I was extremely frustrated and wrote MLS to complain. Anyway, I’ve found that Firefox browser works well. Now I really like the new MLS. Using Firefox I’ve found it very easy to zoom in on the area of the city I want to look at and then skim over to a new area of the city. I can zoom in close or pan out up to 500 properties. Although I have found that there are mistakes with property locations such as a property for Leduc listed in Edmonton Central.
Check out E3151687. If your zoom level is near the max, MLS puts the house in the river. Of course, the description actually says that it’s located in Tamarack, so the amazing mapping software is only off by 14 or 15 km.
I’m not surprised sales are slow. With all this talk about recessions, delayed upgrader builds, layoffs, etc. Although I have no stats to prove it, I’m pretty sure the media has a lot to do with the volume of sales. Just call it a hunch. If someone can get the media on a tizzy about the lack of listings rather than the huge inventory, then sales will probably pick up. A lot of last year’s sales were probably media induced. I know my purchase was.
Actually, I do believe that the new format of the MLS website may have some negative impact on sales volumes, in the long run.
The reason stores put a lot of thought into their displays is that window-shopping creates desire and leads to sales.
MLS is no different. Not everybody who buys a house is in desperate need for one and will go to any length to find one.
We sold our McMansion on a ravine to people who were specifically looking for that type of property, in that particular neighborhood. They monitored our area of the city, daily and for a long time, using the old MLS search criteria.
Had they not seen our house on MLS, they may not have found out about it, since it stayed on the market for only a week and we had other offers.
They may actually not have purchased a house at all, at that time. After all, they traded an almost identical house for ours, just to be on the ravine.
Since “window-shopping” has become a lot more tedious on the new website, especially on a laptop with a built-in mouse, I would say we are generating less desire and less impulse buying.
On the other hand, being able to use the map may appeal to a new group of buyers… but it will only work if the map is actually accurate !
Right now, I am looking for a house on a lake, in the area we are currently living in. Daily searches on MLS bring up nothing…
However, there is the “perfect house” just 3 blocks away… only it’s nowhere to be found on MLS. Who knows where the map thinks it should be… I saw the realtor sign just by chance, and it turns out the house has been on the market for over 4 weeks now!
So, unless I drive through the neighborhoods I am interested in, I may not know that my next house is just sitting there, waiting for me….
That defeats the purpose of the MLS site.
Postal codes are too error-prone to be a pivotal search element, and the map technology does not work well for new neighborhoods…
Apparently they have made some more improvements to Realtor.ca today. They’ve received thousands of complaints about the site, if you want to add your complaint send it to info@crea.ca – we can’t do anything about it!
As for the comments about the power of the MLS… the database is the power. Almost all the showings of our listings come through the database that Realtors and their clients have access to. I can’t understand why anyone would want to search the public site anyway, when all you have to do is sign up for a new listing notification and you’ll get an email daily with all the listings that match your search.
http://tinyurl.com/6hj7pt
It’s simpler, faster, more effective and takes a lot less time than searching the MLS yourself every day.
All that being said, if you really want to search the MLS try going through a local Realtor’s site where you can get more up to date info, since the Edmonton database is updated before the national one.
Lastly, we are working on adding an amazing MLS search to our web site and are sorting through all the red tape right now (there is a lot of it). Hopefully you’ll all just search there in the future!