When you look at the overall stats for the Edmonton MLS, 2008 doesn't look like such a bad year after all. The overall average sale price for residential real estate dropped 5.7% in 2008 from $329,705 on January 1 to $310,974 on December 31.
Total residential sales were down 15% in 2008 compared to 2007, and were similar to what we saw in 2004.The main difference in the last number of years (other than price) is the number of listings, demand has stayed relatively stable:
The increased competition has made it very difficult for many home owners to get their home sold. As you can see from the chart, normally around 70% of the listings will sell, whereas this year only 43% sold (keep in mind one home may be listed many times before it sells which can inflate the number of listings).
The end of month inventory dropped to 6316 homes, due largely to expired listings, which suggests the inventory will increase again quickly, as it did last year:
The number of new listings in December were fairly normal:
But the low sales still lead to a sales to new listings ratio of only 46%:
The absorption rate crept above the 10 month mark – absorption is the inventory divided by the number of sales, and it tells you how many months worth of supply is in the market if sales levels remain the same:
The average number of days on market went up to 65 days:
All in all the real story is sales, which we discussed hereon the blog the other day. The official number released by the board was 608 sales. As Mark Perras, President of the Realtors Association of Edmonton summed it up so well: "Buyers have lots of choice right now and seem willing to wait until their dream house reaches their dream price point.” Here is the full press release.
