You have to love the media. A while back I was contacted by Joanne Latimer with the Ottawa Citizen with regards divorce and real estate. The title of the resulting article was title "War profiteering." Catchy huh? The full article is found here:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Life/profiteering/1188577/story.html
We have talked about divorce before on our blog. The differences in perspective of the contributors is noteworthy. I guess it comes down to the fact that there are many truths. You could even expand that to include the economy. So when Mark Carney with the Bank of Canada says the recession will be deep but Canada will rebound by next year which truth is that? I guess its the truth of only time will tell.
Sheldon,
What do you think how low will the market go…say as %. Thanks.
eagerly waiting your response sheldon – will housing prices take a significant hit? or has the market stabilized at this level would you say?
thanks
With 1000′s getting pink slips up at the pit it becomes a domino effect as related industry start losing contracts and handing out pink slips.
Real estate is going down in Alberta.
That’s a no brainer!
Jason, since nobody has a perfectly clean crystal ball, why don’t you look at the stats Sarah provides every week, and see how the numbers of sales and price reduction have been evolving.
When the market stablizes, you would expect the number of price reductions to go down further than where they are at, right now.
However, what we can’t see from the weekly stats is how prices are stabilizing at the lower end, as compared to the high end.
I am following last year’s inventory above 600K closely, and I still see a high number of very significant price reductions. However, this could be interpreted in several ways.
The majority of the listings that continue to reduce their price may have been highly overpriced, right from the start and are now trying to catch up with the market.
Truly “new” listings in that range might be coming in at a more realistic price right from the start, or the vendors may be willing to accept offers below the asking price.
What I do know is that above 700K, the majority of “new” listings are actually homes that were taken off the market in 2007 or 2008. Other than 2008 construction, there are not too many first-time listings in that range.
Yesterday, I took a look at Comfree and was surprised that the majority of their most expensive listings in the Southwest had actually been listed on MLS for a long time, often at significantly higher prices.
I do feel for the succession of agents who spent time and money on promoting these homes when the vendors were not willing to face reality….