July 2024 Edmonton Area Real Estate Market Update

Now that we are officially halfway through the year, we have seen a steady increase in activity in the Edmonton market over the last six months. But can it hold on for another six months? While we have seen moderate increases across the board in Edmonton since last year, June was the first month this year to start seeing activity slow. We observed a slight and equal reduction in both the number of homes coming to market and the number of homes eventually selling, with roughly an 11%-12% pullback. This caused the number of active homes on the market to slowly increase between months. Prices also saw an interesting change in June. While prices either fell slightly or remained flat, apartment condominiums were the only category to see an actual median price rise of 1.6% in June, now bringing it to the second-largest year-over-year increase at 11.4%. Townhomes remain the leader in annual price growth at 15.7%. Amid slowing activity and relatively flat prices, homes are still selling quicker than ever. The average home is selling in exactly 30 days, and in some cases, like townhomes, averaging merely 25 days on the market. We can still feel the pressure in this market, but both buyers and sellers who approached their transactions this month with realistic expectations saw the most success. This includes writing appropriate offers, either inside or outside of competition, or listing their homes at an average and fair value based on location and comparatives. Moving forward, July and August will likely see either a continuation of a slight pullback as many go on summer holidays or remain flat without much change, with hopefully a boost in early fall. It is unlikely, with an inflection point such as June, that Edmonton will experience an uncontrolled bull run with month-over-month gains regardless of the annual norms. Instead, it is expected to follow similar trends as previous years. If you want to know how to take advantage of selling in this market, reach out to me for a free home evaluation, and I am happy to walk you through selling this spring and summer. https://lorenzgroup.ca/evaluation If you want to know how to best position yourself in this buying market, reach out for a free buying consultation and I am happy to come up with a game plan for you this year. https://lorenzgroup.ca/contact

June 2024 Edmonton Area Real Estate Market Update

Another busy month in the books! It is almost officially summer, and I’m looking forward to not bringing a raincoat every time I need to show a home.  May was another busy and eventful month in Edmonton we had increasing sales and listings come to market from last month however it is important to note that the momentum and month-over-month have slowed slightly over the last couple of months. We still saw strong growth from this time last year with nearly 20% more sales in May 2024 than in May 2023, and almost 75% of all listings that came to market sold this month! A strong seller’s market!  Homes values still posted another increase this month, but again the month-over-month gain wasn’t as strong as we had seen the last couple of months with just a 0.7% increase from last month. Everything has seen a bump up in prices except for row/townhomes which fell by 1.3% in May, however, they are leading the year-over-year growth still at 18%.  Homes are also selling much quicker in May than they were in April or earlier in the year, and more than 21% quicker than last year. With most homes taking just a couple of days more than a month to sell, there are still many multiple offer scenarios throughout the city for highly desirable price points or highly desirable neighbourhoods even with homes into the $800s and higher competing in 4 offers or more.  The good news is that we are still bringing more listings to market than sales are happening. As I have been saying all spring, this needs to remain this way to keep some feeling of control of our spring market. If no more homes were to come on the market after today, we would sell everything in about 1 month and 25 days at our current pace which is typically not a lot of inventory for the amount of sales we have as a healthy market would be 3-6 months.  So buyers and sellers, where could this next month go? Now that we have the new announcement this morning that the Bank of Canada has lowered rates by 0.25%, this move is cited to jolt the slow housing markets. However with an already hot market in Edmonton, I think we will see continued demand throughout the first half of the summer as I think we would see everyone who has been waiting for a change in rates before making a move jump into the market and only keep the demand high throughout the summer. Even though the difference between a no rate decrease and a rate decrease is minimal, as we have seen time and time again, the perceived effect drives demand more than the effect.  If you want to know how to take advantage of selling in this market, reach out to me for a free home evaluation, and I am happy to walk you through selling this spring and summer. https://lorenzgroup.ca/evaluation If you want to know how to best position yourself in this buying market, reach out for a free buying consultation and I am happy to come up with a game plan for you this year. https://lorenzgroup.ca/contact  

May 2024 Edmonton Area Real Estate Market Update

April snow brings May flowers? That is how that saying goes... right? At least that is how I would adopt it for living in Edmonton. Well, if nothing else, I got a brand new look at this continued pressure with the spring market now that it is May.  If there is one word I could use to describe April, that would be FAST. Fast is how quickly I have seen homes sell in the last 30 days. It should come as no surprise that only in January the average home took 2 months to sell, we would only sell less than 50 homes a day in the Greater Edmonton Area, and the median home price was... wait for it... $390,000!!  Today the landscape is much different, most homes are selling in almost half that amount of time, with 36 days on the market for any type of home and as low as 29 days for semi-detached homes. If it is priced correctly, it is usually sold in a week where sellers accept one of several offers within the first day or two of listing. On top of that, we are selling 2.7x more homes than we were 4 months ago, and almost 55% more than this time last year. No wonder I received 10 offers on one of my listings this month with the highest more than 10% above the asking price, and no, that is not a typo.  Speaking of prices, they have steadily risen this month, posting a 3.2% median price increase which is quite a bit more than March bringing our annual total to an 8.2% median price increase. This month, most of that is contributed to single-family detached as row townhomes moved up 2.8%, semi-detached took a break at a 0% change, and apartment condos couldn't even hang on for 3 months in a row of increases as they fell last month by 0.3%.  So, where do we go from here? Well if last year is any indication (which I never bank on for any year since 2020) it wasn't until June when we started to see things level out with prices and sales. I know my buyers are over with hearing me say that they are competing once again, or to offer above asking price if they even stand a chance to be considered, but if history is even close, I would expect a very busy May at the very least. So, if you are a seller in this market, what is the game plan this month? There is a reason why some homes get 2, 3, 5, or 10 offers and sell for some amount above the asking price, and why others help drag out a statistic and take 30+ days to sell, after all, an average is made up of two extremes. The answer lies in starting at a fair price and making your home the best in the market. If you try to get ahead of pricing or skip those last-minute touch-ups, that might be the difference between selling double digits above the asking price next week or selling next month. Buyers, the good news is rates are better than we have seen in nearly 2 years, but with that comes some of the most competition we have seen in those same 2 years. Unfortunately, it is a high-risk, high-reward situation. People are risking their deposits just to write an offer with no financing, even when they don't have the cash in the bank to close (I'll never recommend you do this if I am solely discussing your best interest, but it sure is a winning strategy), or risking their next investment without a proper inspection, again high risk, high reward. If you are a buyer not wanting to take any risks, not pay a dollar above asking, there is one thing that checks almost all of your boxes, all of the overpriced homes that are just sitting on the market because they have been overlooked. It's a bit of a buyer's hack, because they are not all bad listings either, as a few factors can determine why a listing is sitting longer than average.   If you want to know how to take advantage of selling in this market, reach out to me for a free home evaluation, and I am happy to walk you through selling this spring. https://lorenzgroup.ca/evaluation If you want to know how to best position yourself in this buying market, reach out for a free buying consultation and I am happy to come up with a game plan for you this year. https://lorenzgroup.ca/contact  

April 2024 Edmonton Area Market Update

So it continues, if you have had a chance to catch my monthly market update over the last few months you would notice that we have been seeing consistent growth in our Edmonton market in both sales, prices, and thankfully inventory. It is only the beginning of April, but it is certainly clear we are having a hot start to spring - so let me break down the main points from March.    In March we brought nearly 3600 new homes to market which grew by another 1/3 from February and almost 9% higher than last year which resulted in another 25% more homes sold in March than the previous month, and a significant increase over 2023 at almost 36%. With this much volume transacting all of a sudden, it is no wonder we are hearing rumours of price increases and homes not lasting very long in multiple offers, which I will get to. The good news through all of this is we had more listings come to market than come off the market, putting us in a positive inventory position which will be important this spring and in the coming months to keeping prices in check. (At least moderate the increases.)   But with all this buying and selling frenzy, homes are no longer sitting on the market for nearly 2 months like they were just merely weeks ago. The average home is selling in 39 days with some row/townhomes selling within a 34 day average. This about 19% shorter than last year and 22% quicker than in February. Because we still continue to see lots of multiple offers, one might easily wonder how prices have reacted this spring. The median home price in the Greater Edmonton Area finally crossed the $400,000 mark up to $405,000 this month increasing 1.8% this month, with the high riser surprisingly the apartment condos growing 10.5% in March! A overdue comeback. Oh and don't worry, I didn't forget about the row/townhouses as I am saving the best for last, they are up 24% since this time last year.      So, where does it go from here? Typically we start seeing prices in the market peak between April and May, however we have had outlier years that have peaked earlier or much later than this. If we look south to our friends in Calgary, it hasn't slowed down in over 2 years, which has started pushing some of the lower priced Calgary buyers north to Edmonton. There certainly is a case to be made that we could see a prolonged spring market this year with hopes of lower rates or more interprovincial migration with more people choosing Edmonton over Calgary, However many factors affect the housing market, like supply chain, government policy or elections are all indirect factors that could cut our market short, or drag it out for a longer run... I think we will need to wait and see.   The biggest mistakes I have seen people make is trying to time the market on the way up or on the way down. If you are going to buy, buy because it makes sense to in the long run, either has a home or investment property. The same should be said for selling, if it makes sense to sell this year, then that is great, but I don't recommend doing it just to "lock in" higher spring prices, who knows if this is just the "pre-game warmup".    If you want to know how to take advantage of selling in this market, reach out to me for a free home evaluation, and I am happy to walk you through selling this spring. https://lorenzgroup.ca/evaluation   If you want to know how to best position yourself in this buying market, reach out for a free buying consultation and I am happy to come up with a game plan for you this year. https://lorenzgroup.ca/contac