fyi: housevalues.ca

There are tv ads running for a website called housevalues.ca. The suggestion is you get an estimate of the value of your home for free, online, no muss, no fuss. How great is that? Maybe you don't even have to talk to an icky real estate agent ...

Well, not exactly. There is nothing wrong with the site, but I thought you might like to know what it is and how it works. The site is run by an outfit called Market Leader in Washington state. Their customers are real estate agents and brokers. Their product is "lead generation".

You plug in location and contact information. They will give you a couple of listings in your geographic area and somehow (without ever looking at your home or laying human hands and eyes on the process) give a price estimate. They also give your information to the agent who has subscribed to their service for your area.

Again, nothing evil. But the estimate is rather unrefined, and you can get a full market evaluation by calling an agent of your choice anytime you wish.

Just thought you would like to know.

Coming soon, in a similar vein, I'll let you know what you get if you pay $24.95 for BMO's home-buying package.

April Statistics & Analysis

TREB Market Watch.*

May 6, 2009. The April statistics came out today. Following is our personal analysis.

While we have been doing this sort of analysis (and more) for ourselves and our market understanding, this is the first time we have put it “out there”. It takes a fair bit of extra work to make it “pretty” and understandable (I hope) to the layman. Please, if anybody out there reads this, tell us what you think. Useful? Useless? What should be taken out? What should be added? Do you agree with the analysis? We really want the feedback.

Volume: There were 7.5% fewer sales than last April and 14.2% less than April 2007. The total number of active listings is very similar to last year and 2007. This could be a bad sign. If there are just as many houses out there, less are selling and more keep coming onto the market, then you have increasing supply and decreasing demand.

But it turns out that less new listings are coming into the market compared to past years – a lot less (like, a third less). So, although demand is down, so is supply.

So what? It looks like quite a few people are “sitting tight”, both buyers and sellers. This helps to keep the market reasonably in balance, as you will see from the price discussion.

Price: Down. But only 3.3% from last year’s average price at this time, and actually slightly higher than 2007! Back in October, 2008 the year over year price dropped 10%. We nearly fell out of our chairs. We knew volume was down, but prices seemed to be holding. Our theory, that we can almost prove, was that it was the mix of homes distorting the actual price fall. The high-end homes stopped selling. The 10% year-over-year drop didn’t get worse through the winter months. By February it had narrowed to only a 6.5% drop. In March it was only about 5% and April is only 3.3%.

So what? It sort of depends what you see on the horizon – a rising sun, or a nasty fall off the edge of the world! The market has been surprisingly strong and active this spring despite all the economic doom and gloom. Given all the pain in some of your investment portfolios, and in the real estate market to our south, a 3% slip in the value of your home doesn’t seem too bad. And the trend line over the last 3 months is actually improving. But the questions are the same ones being asked about the current stock market rally: Is it real and permanent or just a nice blip in a longer downturn? We like to think we have some expertise. In this case we think we are expert enough to know that we don’t know! We’ll enjoy the better news while it lasts, but we won’t be shocked if there is another slide (hopefully modest and short).

Time: “DOM” means “days on market”. Followers will know that we don’t put much stock in this statistic, at least when applied to a single sale or a small sample. But applied to the whole market it still tells a story. Average days on market, year over year has increased by 10 days or 37%! Given the marketing tactic of cancelling older listings and bringing the same property out as “new”, this figure is probably significantly worse in reality.

So What? Homes are taking longer to sell. Far fewer examples of holding off offers and seeing multiple offers. Buyers have more time to think, and sellers have to keep their home beautiful and clean a lot longer! Don’t forget, however that the average is still well below what the market considered “normal” for many many years.

Sale-to-List Price Ratio: Another statistic that we generally dislike (and we can wax eloquent on why it is meaningless in a small sample). Nonetheless it is interesting to note that the overall number has slipped a bit, even more in the “hot” neighbourhoods such as The Beach.

So What? It really just confirms all of the above. While the market will still punish you if you price too high (and we know you really want to!!), the old trick of putting it out at a low price and letting the feeding-frenzy get you a pile of cash just isn’t as likely to work in this changing market.

Below are a few selected numbers, recognizing that the bulk of our clients are in the Toronto East areas.

If you need help interpreting these, have questions, or would like some specific numbers or analysis, contact us anytime. If you are masochistic enough to want to see the entire Market Watch report, off you go to http://www.torontorealestateboard.com/consumer_info/market_news/mw2009/pdf/mw0904.pdf Have fun.

April 2009

Area	Active	New	Sales	AvgPrice	MedPrice	DOM	%List
E01	128	115	90	$421,850	$412,500	22	99
E02	105	95	85	$641,479	$484,000	28	98
E03	222	171	130	$353,453	$350,000	23	98
E04	181	115	102	$237,866	$264,750	36	96
E06	130	83	63	$396,573	$320,000	34	96
E08	206	107	77	$276,521	$280,000	32	96
All East	4,747	2,744	1,820	$306,890	$278,500	36	97
All TREB	23,515	12,995	8,107	$385,641	$330,000	37	97

April 2008

Area	Active	New	Sales	AvgPrice	MedPrice	DOM	%List
E01	146	170	107	$447,011	$434,900	17	104
E02	131	159	82	$566,242	$495,902	12	101
E03	281	289	148	$386,947	$389,750	15	102
E04	254	189	78	$276,107	$290,500	25	98
E06	121	111	55	$435,042	$342,000	25	99
E08	279	196	103	$318,619	$297,000	32	98
All East	5,670	4,217	2,065	$311,350	$280,000	28	99
All TREB	24,530	18,691	8,762	$398,687	$334,950	27	99

April 2007

Area	Active	New	Sales	AvgPrice	MedPrice	DOM	%List
E01	134	145	107	$398,745	$382,500	17	103
E02	123	136	103	$497,150	$445,000	15	103
E03	303	245	138	$366,395	$354,250	18	101
E04	254	174	81	$263,706	$278,000	26	98
E06	123	115	85	$373,684	$310,000	20	98
E08	348	191	95	$276,392	$270,000	34	98
All East	5,467	3,774	2,267	$300,530	$277,000	30	98
All TREB	22,829	15,793	9,452	$379,025	$319,900	30	98

*Market Watch is a monthly publication of the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) which consolidates monthly statistics for the GTA real estate market.