Edmonton Real Estate Market Weekly Update – June 8/12

by Sara MacLennan on June 8, 201208. Jun, 2012 in Edmonton Real Estate Market, Weekly Update

EdmontonRealEstateMarketUpdate
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: 617 (562, 488, 551)
# Sales: 320 (322, 261, 331)
Ratio: 52% (57%, 53%, 60%)
# Price changes: 349 (327, 260, 313)
# Expired/Off Market Listings: 275 (272, 118, 130)
Net loss/gain in listings this week: 22 (-32, 109, 90)
Active single family home listings: 3147 (3044, 3058, 3017)
Active condo listings: 2099 (2057, 2084, 2017)
Homes 4-week running average: $404k ($403k, $402k, $400k)
Condos 4-week running average: $242k ($243k, $237k, $237k)

Realistically sales for the Edmonton real estate market should be substantially higher, but the recent birth of our twins and a torn meniscus in Sheldon's knee has slowed the Edmonton market down considerably. All kidding aside, things are quite active as we are most likely just past the peak of sales for the year. The weekly sales and listings graph demonstrate that both categories are well with in previous norms for Edmonton.

It is still a little challenging for buyers in the high demand price ranges of Edmonton for single family ($300-$400k). If you don’t want to deal with multiple offers I recommend that you hold off your search (although this will not guarantee that you won’t find yourself in that situation down the road). Multiple offers are always challenging for first time buyers, and we have found they tend to base their offer on the list price of the home rather than the value of the home, potentially passing up a very good property at a fair price. What is even more troubling is if they find themselves in the same situation again, they often base their offer on winning the negotiation and not the value of the property and are therefore vulnerable to over paying.

If you have a home on the market in Edmonton that has not sold it is probably time to re-evaluate your asking price. If you are basing your decision on sales that took place in previous months, it is quite possible the value as we head in to the second half of the year will be different based solely on seasonality.

Also of interest this week is a report from CMHC on housing starts. It shows that single family home starts are up 11% in Edmonton while condo starts are up 57% so far this year, compared to last year. Interesting that condo starts have increased so much when all the demand seems to be for single family homes on the resale market. 

“Growth in multi-family construction is supported by an economy characterized by an expanding labour market, rising incomes, and higher levels of net migration,” said Christina Butchart, CMHC’s Senior Market Analyst for Edmonton.

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Edmonton real estate prices
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Edmonton real estate listings

Have a great weekend!

About

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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10 Responses to “Edmonton Real Estate Market Weekly Update – June 8/12”

  1. ShawnNo Gravatar 08. Jun, 2012 at 2:43 pm #

    I would like to hear some hypothesis towards the significant condo start. Why are condos so high @ 57% when demand is lower?
    Any ideas?

    • NathanNo Gravatar 08. Jun, 2012 at 4:51 pm #

      My hypothesis is that there is simply more fluctuation in housing starts for Condos because they occur in bigger clumps. Housing starts for a new SFD development will come in stages of 10-20 units, sometimes larger. But starts for condos come in 30-100 units, or even more. The addition of just afew more or less big condo developments can throw the numbers off. I’ll bet that new tower downtown is part of that 57% jump.

      Of course the lesson in this is that it’s probably a bad time to buy an unbuilt condo.

  2. JoeNo Gravatar 08. Jun, 2012 at 10:55 pm #

    There’s a boom coming. 2 years and BOOM. Made 173000 last one. Next one who knows. Love it! Living young and wild and free!

  3. CMDNo Gravatar 10. Jun, 2012 at 10:17 am #

    On the flip side, you typically get the best incentives and rebates when you buy a condo during pre-sales. Plus you can pick your finishings, parking stall location, etc.

    • GMNo Gravatar 10. Jun, 2012 at 10:54 pm #

      And if you are lucky and time it right, your condo may be worth more than what you paid for it once it’s built and ready to move in.

  4. HamiltonGuyNo Gravatar 11. Jun, 2012 at 8:02 am #

    Condo’s are tricky beasts. As previously mentioned they come onto the market in larger clumps and often as different builders try to meet demand years in advance, you end up with multiple properties often coming to market at around the same time causing spikes in the numbers.

    We’re experiencing that with the luxury condo/hotel room market here in Toronto right now. Four projects started at the same time to service an unserviced market and now we have buildings completing with 30% of the condo’s unsold.

  5. JohnNo Gravatar 11. Jun, 2012 at 9:56 am #

    I would like to see a breakdown of the condo stats based on location. Where in the city are condos more popular? My bet would be anywhere along the LRT lines.

  6. Shawn SNo Gravatar 12. Jun, 2012 at 6:55 pm #

    There has been an alarming number of condos that are being hit by special assesment, we do not have proper legislation in place such as required certification for building supervisors and accountability for building inspectors and civic authorities and fairly lax practices by our trades people, unless these issues are fixed the purchaser is taking on a huge risk by purchasing an apartment condo. I don’t know how you could sleep at night knowing that you could possibly be hit with a 40 to 50K special assesment and your condo fees could skyrocket and you would have no recourse.

  7. GMNo Gravatar 12. Jun, 2012 at 9:53 pm #

    Whatever happened to all those condos in Leduc a while back where the owners were all kicked out by the fire department because the inspectors didn’t do their jobs (as usual)?

    • birdladyNo Gravatar 13. Jun, 2012 at 7:48 am #

      GM, It was just on the news about a week ago that the required improvements were proceeding very well and everything was ok now. But from my point of view definetely makes you wonder if any other shiny new developments don’t or won’t have problems.

      I think it is buyer beware – new or resale.