Today, I'm going to give you a real estate
market update and you're going to walk away with some tangible information that you can
take with you to strategize around your purchase or your sale.
I'm going to talk about timing and pricing, which are all key elements if you're looking
to buy or sell. I'm going to talk about the stats and at the
end, I'm going to give you some advice for buyers, sellers, and investors.
Now, if you're new to our channel, my name is Felix Chan, realtor, and mortgage broker
with the LiveInnerCity real estate team. And as a realtor/mortgage broker for the last
10 years, I've seen a lot of ups and downs on the market.
And today I want to share with you some of my insights and what I'm seeing out on the market.
So let's go.
I want to start off with the sales picture.
Now I'm going to take us back all the way to April so you can kind of see the trends.
In April we had the dead halt because of COVID. In May, we started off pretty slow, but we
ended up picking up on the back half of May and we were about 40% behind 2019’s numbers.
Now in June, we ended up catching up and we ended up matching last year's numbers.
And in July, we ended up having 12% more in sales of last year. And we've really picked
up speed, because I think people were pressured with kids going back to school. Maybe, perhaps
people were scared of a second wave, but typically in this month, we usually start seeing sales
decline. These numbers indicate a few things.
Number one, the spring market came late. Instead of April, it came later in June and July and
two, people still need homes.
They need to buy homes. They want to buy homes and they're capable of buying homes.
Plus, mortgage rates right now are at a record low. So that's definitely helped fueling the
desire to buy all of which is really good news.
Now I'm going to pull up a graph here, and this is the weekly sales comparing July of
this year to July of 2019. Now it was a bit of a rollercoaster, as you can see.
And we had a really good last half of June. July was up and down, but the last part of
July, the market was on a tear. I want to show you guys the showing activity
in Alberta. Now this graph right now, the number of showings comparing 2019 to 2020.
Now the blue line is taught from 2019. And the orange line is this year. As you can see,
there's a huge gap between the two years.
We are about 119% more showings this year, then the same time last year. There's definitely
a growth in showing activity, and this is an indication of what we can expect to see
in August, which will likely turn into another month of strong sales.
Next is the inventory story. Now I'm going to pull up this graph. It's the week we new
listings graph. Now, as you can see in the back part of June, we started to see a large
increase in inventory across all property types, mostly from those who were really holding
off because of the uncertainty of the virus. Now that trend carried into the beginning
of July, but really slowed down dramatically in the last two weeks.
This second graph is weekly active listings, meaning properties that are staying on the
market. Now, compared to 2019, we're sitting at about 11% fewer total properties on the
market, which is about 750 homes.
Than the same time last year. Now my feeling is all the buyers who have been waiting on
the fence to buy are now seeing it as a good opportunity.
So it's not just pent up demand, but it's also buyers kind of coming onto the market.
This is all good news. And in order to maintain pricing, inventory levels must stay at the
same levels. Pricing.
Now, Calgary as a whole year over year, we've adjusted down by about 1.2%. And this is for
all of Calgary. Now month over month, there is a slight growth of 0.6%.
Now every market segment is slightly different. So for example, single family homes are holding
their price better than condos. Looking back at the sales numbers, if are
sales stays the same, our inventory continues to stay low. We could stay flat for pricing
for the month of August.
All right. So here is my advice for buyers. I'm going to pull up this graph and this graph
is a sales to new listings ratio and what it does, it really shows the real time of
the market. Now it does factor in the number of sales
that have occurred relative to the number of new listings coming to the market. So in
healthy and strong market, we're going to see this ratio rather a little bit higher.
And we had an uptick in May when Premier Kenney announced the reopening of the economy, we
saw another peak, from the pent-up demand. And then for the last few weeks of July, we
saw some pretty consistent growth. Now the market is moving a bit faster than you would
probably expect and being in real estate for a number of years.
One of the principles of real estate I've come up with is that a home that shows good
value, meaning it shows well, it has a good price
will always SELL no matter what the market
you're in, if it's a seller’s, balanced or buyer's market, and this is no exception,
sellers are pricing their home products. So if you see something that you like and
it hits off most of the checkboxes on your list, don't take your time to write an offer,
take a reasonable amount of time, but don't expect that it's going to be around forever.
You have to move on it. Here's my advice for sellers.
And I'm going to pull up this graph, which is the sold price to list price ratio. Now,
all the sales that have happened in the last three days are in this graph. This really shows
you the percentage of your list, price that you can expect to sell your home as time moves
on. Now, it's important to note that the higher pricing is achieved, saved in the first 30
days.
And if you take a look at the graph from day 0 to 10 days on the market, you're going
to achieve about 98.5% of your list price. Assuming you are priced at market expectations.
As we move in 10 day increments, the pricing adjusts about 1%.
Now, 1% based on our average sale price here in Calgary is about $4,500.
So every 10 days it drops about $4,500. It does flatten out at around 96% of the asking
price of 40 days after going to market. So my advice to you is price your property well.
As a seller, there's really two types out
there -- you're either going to set the market or you're going to chase the market.
And in an environment like this, you always want to be the one who sets precedents.
Investors. Okay. So half of our market sales have actually
been happening under 30 days on market because average days on market right now is about
50.
This means that there's not a lot of opportunity to find those “great deals”,
and you're going to be competing for properties that show well and are priced, right.
We may start seeing a fundamental shift in the types of homes that make good investments
as remote working becomes the norm. So, shifting from dirt, not condos from inner
city to the suburbs, so people can have an attached garage, a bigger yard and more space
for a lower cost. So that wraps up our Calgary real estate market
for the month of July. So, it's going to be very interesting to see what August has just
because of the lower inventory, the lower new listings, increase in sales and the large
amount of showings that were receiving. Not only that, but the low interest rates
is definitely fueling some of this demand. And it's going to be interesting to see, see
how long this will last for. If you guys want to keep a pulse on the Calgary
real estate market or wants more real estate and mortgage tips hit the subscribe button
and the notification bell. So you know where we have videos coming out.
My name is Felix Chan with the LiveInnerCity real estate team, helping you keep real estate
simple. And we'll see you next time.