Edmonton Real Estate Market Update
Here is our update on the Edmonton real estate market. (Previous week’s numbers are in brackets). For the past 7 days:
New listings: 515 (461, 522, 531)
# Sales: 273 (267, 239, 235)
Ratio: 53% (58%, 46%, 44%)
# Price changes: 197 (212, 211, 211)
# Expired/Off Market Listings: 237 (82, 125, 124)
Net loss/gain in listings this week: 5 (112, 158, 172)
Active single family home listings: 2714 (2685, 2631, 2525)
Active condo listings: 1696 (1713, 1649, 1569)
Homes 4-week running average: $389k ($388k, $384k, $379k)
Condos 4-week running average: $232k ($229k, $231k, $236k)
Edmonton real estate listings and sales
Edmonton real estate prices
Brand new this week: EdmontonRealEstateMarket.com - our newest site shows neighbourhood based real estate stats including listings, sales, average prices and more. We have done over 100 communities so far and we are adding more all the time. We will update each neighbourhood on a quarterly basis (or thereabouts). Plus - each neighbourhood page links to the current MLS listings for that neighbourhood. Check it out!
About Sara MacLennan
Sara MacLennan is the Director of Marketing at Liv Real Estate and a licensed Real Estate Associate. The bulk of Sara’s experience and wealth of expertise lies in on-line technology and marketing both for agents and consumers. Sara is the former National Director for Interactive Marketing for Coldwell Banker Canada where she was responsible for an extensive training program traveling to offices across the country training agents and brokers on marketing and technology. Find Sara on Twitter @edmontonblogger.
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Calgary has a very simple and very effective system.
They issue two large garbage bins to each house (with wheels).
One if for garbage, the other is for recycleables.
It works great.
Edmonton is stuck in the dark ages.
and your links don’t work! (404 error).
Sorry…fixed
New website looks pretty good. 100 communities and growing – how many communities are there roughly? Certainly helps to check out your competition in your own neighbourhood. When you say you will update quarterly, what exactly will you be updating quarterly. If properties are sold or added, will they automatically come off or add onto your site or is that what you need to update?
There are a few hundred in the Greater Edmonton area. We will be updating all the stats – average price, number of sales etc. We have to do this manually.
367 as of Q1 2011 to be exact
Like I have said all along, debt is the skeleton in the closet.
Offered for discussion:
link to m.theglobeandmail.com
Keep in mind this fact:
The debt ratio is based on the ratio of total household income to total debt outstanding.
However, as each year goes by more and more people are working “under the table”, which does not show up in gov’t statistics. So total Canadian income is higher than officially stated. And don’t forget about all the drug money floating around this country which is not reported for obvious reasons. So our total income may be quite a bit higher than they think.
And I also suspect that a great majority of the outstanding debt is people getting a line of credit on their house and investing it for a positive return, while getting a tax write-off for the interest. Maybe this is what the government is really so concerned about. This is causing less taxes to come into their greedy hands.
Are you serious? Drug money?
I agree with GM. Even though drug dealing is hard to verify, however it very common for people to borrow more mortgages and invest. The stock market has been fantastic since 2008. Personally, I have a six figure investment in the stock market while carrying a 2.1% mortgage.
Pretty much what he said the last two years as well. Remember the debt statistics they pulled are for the average adult Canadian, not just property owners.
Mentioned it before but as per statscan 45% of property owners in Canada are mortgage free, much better then in the US where they best data I can find shows it is 33%.
Your totally right GM! Don’t forget all of the income generated by human smuggling, prosititution and illegal gambling! I can see the headline in the Edmonton Journal now: “Edmonton Housing Market Fueled by Illegal Activity Income” This market is hot hot hot!
I suspect the that a great majority of the outstanding debt is people buying 70,000 dollar pick-up trucks (“gotta have the 6 inch lift, or you’re a ***”), ski-boats, diamond rings and trips to mexico. Investments? What world do you exist in? 4 out of every 10 Canadians don’t have any rainy day savings, let alone investments.
Wow GM, that is quite a stretch of reasoning based on the article. I was trying to point out that for the first time Carney is actually hinting they he may raise the bank rate to slow down our collective use of credit. This is big news as the BOC main mandate is just inflation control, so to have him come right out and say he may have to ask indicates that they know this problem is getting out of hand.
The overwhelming majority of people operate for the most part within the system and are included in the statistics. I have bought and sold a fair amount of real estate in several provinces and all the buyers were financed up the ying yang.
I agree with Sarcasmo that most of the money is being spent on stuff, or renovations to keep up with the Joneses. I do know a few people taking advantage of low interest rate HELOC’s to invest but not many. Most Canadians, as already pointed out have no savings or investments of any kind.
Interesting as well that Albertans are the most indebted in Canada in case you missed that headline last week.
Anecdotally, I added a fifth friend or aquaintance this week who is comtemplating dumping or holding a negative equity condo rental purchased in 07 that is up for renewal this summer. On average they are down $40 000 on thw purchase price and negative a couple hundred a month on carrying costs….
Ouch!
Okay, maybe you guys are right. But I personally know a couple of people who have HUGE HELOC’s that are using 100% of them for investments. They’re making income each and every month from dividends, more than the cost of interest on the HELOC’s. So why wouldn’t they do this? They get a tax write-off every year to boot, which lowers the tax they pay.
If interest rates go up, they can just sell all of their investments and close the HELOC.
In my opinion, this accounts for a significant portion of Canadian debt. Carney wants to stop it because it is costing him tax dollars.
Huh? Your reasoning doesn’t make any sense. Carney and the BoC’s mandate has nothing to do with collecting tax income for the federal government.
From Wiki:
“The responsibilities of the Bank are: monetary policy; sole issuer of Canadian banknotes and currency; the promotion of a safe, sound financial system within Canada; and funds management and central banking services for the federal government, the Bank and other clients.”
Carney is genuinely concerned for the financial health of Canadian economy. He recognizes that the greatest threat to economy is record high household debt. If people don’t let up (and they won’t) were in trouble even if interest rates don’t go up.
We can all speculate whether house prices in Alberta are too high or too low (w.r.t. rest of the country). It just boggles mind that the avg price of a 2-story in Vancouver is almost $1.2M. What kind of job an “avg” person in Vancouver has to support this?! Is the economy of Vancouver really that much better (if better at all!) than Calgary/Edmonton? If you look up statistics Canada, Calgary and Edmonton have the highest house-hold income in Canada. The population of Alberta is among the younger (mostly 30-40 range).
I do think that the house prices in other major cities (read Van/Tor) are way above what they are worth and most of this debt is carried by those who have bought a 30-year hold house in Vancouver for $1+M and carry $900k 30/year mortgage.
Pure land economics – there isn’t much land left to develop in the Lower Mainland, ergo, prices are high. Couple that with a growing population and viola, higher land prices = higher house prices.
Where in Canada are there more grow-ops than you can shake a stick at?
Why, BC of course. That’s all tax-free drug money profits, folks.
Not hard to pay a few million dollar houses with that kind of income.
yeah right,… people in vancouver can afford these prices because they either have a “grow-ops” or are a dealer!! (?!?)
Well, having a portion of your population with a lot of money in their pockets certainly won’t push house prices down, now will it?
GM you must be one of the customers of these srug dealers/growers that are propping up house prices.
No, I just read the newspapers.
There are plenty of grow ops in Edmonton. Prices are lower than Van.
Yes, but BC is the grow-op world leader.
Plus, Chinese are not allowed to hold more than one property in China, I believe. And it’s still a communist country, so I don’t think they feel all that comfortable investing in their stock market, if they even have one.
So buying real estate in Canada is a safe bet for them. And they love Vancouver.
Maybe Mandel should try and make Edmonton more attractive to Chinese.
“Plus, Chinese are not allowed to hold more than one property in China, I believe.”
Wow, since when did you become the premier of China.
Uhh… where exactly did I say I was the premier of China?
Because you just set a new rule for China “Chinese are not allowed to hold more than one property in China”.
I was mistaken. In Beijing Chinese cannot own more than TWO properties.
Quote from this article:
“In Beijing they cannot buy a third home, even with their own money.”
link to internationalpropertyjournal.com
Still false. There is a big difference between “can’t buy 3rd” and “can’t own more than 2″.
The latter implies that you would have to sell your extra properties if you already own them, which is not true.
BTW, that’s is not a law, just a temporary executive order in very few cities to ease the anger of the mass over high real estate prices. It doesn’t apply to high end properties and will likely be scraped within this year.
wsn,
Can you please point out where I can find the information on this policy being scrapped this year?
Thanks.
Chinese president Hu and premier Wen will both step down this year (easy to Google). This temporary measure will be scrapped by the new premier Li.
It’s like, the Whitemud has a speed limit of 80km/hr, but you are actually expected to drive at 90km/hr. Even the police expect you to do that. It’s not documented anywhere. But you just know, if you are familiar with the matter.
The chance that the rule stays is like you being caught for speeding at 89km/hr on Whitemud. It’s possible, but not probable.