Walk a Kb or Two in my Moccasins- Nobody 'splained it to me like that!

Simple answers to Complex Questions and Complex Answers to Simple Questions. In real life, I'm a Greater-Toronto (Canada) Realtor with RE/MAX Hallmark Realty Ltd, Brokerage. I first joined RE/MAX in 1983 and was first Registered to Trade in Real Estate in Ontario in 1974. Formerly known as "Two-Finger Ramblings of a Forensic Acuitant turned Community Synthesizer"

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Thursday, February 19, 2009

TREB mid month Press Release + SSheet

TREB mid month Press Release + SSheet

Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 3:36 PM
To: Jason Mercer, trebpres, Mary Gallagher
Cc: "Klump, Gregory", BCREA, Bob Linney

Exec Summary of this post

TREB realty Market should be much worse given 4-5 months of unrelenting economic meltdown news.

It's not.

That's the story.

We should be pushing that counter-to-what-everybody-expects aspect.

rce


Jason,

GTA Housing Resales at 2,044 in Mid February
February 19, 2009 -- Greater Toronto REALTORS® reported 2,044 sales through the first 14 days of February, compared to 2,775 sales reported during the same period in 2008.
see details (pdf)


Just looked at the press release and while the advocacy towards repeal of the (ludicrous to begin with) Toronto Land Transfer tax might be covered by the media ... IMHO what they want is an answer to 1) When/Where's the Bottom? 2) How badly have prices dropped?

While our friends at CREA have been quite forthright in saying they feel 2009 is going to be rough and 2010 might be the bottom, and the lunatic putting out stats for the B.C. assoc. might as well be saying "Don't Buy, you idiots, prices are dropping like a stone in this province" ... I see no reason why TREB cannot have its own voice on our individual market.

(I'm anxiously awaiting CMHC's First Qtr Outlook, but haven't seen it for resales yet)



In intellectually-enlightened circles, a "decline of an annualized trend" may spark fires, similar thinkers may be warmed by the assurance that "if this trend continues ... it could point..." to the current price level ($364,748) being the bottom (btwn $360-370K).

I don't know if those enlightened circles are over or under represented in the Toronto news media, but I think we can predict that they're going to find no front-page headline or above the crease on the business page headline in the current release


Perhaps there IS "no headline" in the data thus far, but I think there are two points about the Toronto/GTA market that are in need of more expression:

1)sales over ~$850K in 416 ($500 in 905) are dramatically off past levels but $200-450K is as good as you could except in an economic climate of consumer distress and monetary/fiscal deterioration


I attached the table I use for sales background and monthly comparisons

I doubled the mid-month stat of 2044 and entered it as 4088 --- it represents 73.7% of the average # sales from 1997-07
so to me the TREB market is off from "normal" by 26.3% in the middle of the worst economic environment /consumer climate since the 1930's

It could be far worse and IS far worse in other Canadian markets and in other countries

As our Banking system is deemed the strongest (because of the small # of huge banks and their v. conservative practices) so too is the TREB market stronger than most if not all ( because we had a boring, solid, steady boom from the 1995 bottom and we have plenty of demand from a diverse economic base and (thankfully so far) not a glut of panicked and/or over-extended sellers flooding our listing inventories



2) AVERAGE Prices are off 2007-8 peaks primarily because the shift in sales away from the top end, affects the mathematics that creates an average price.

I wish I had the stats broken down by number of sales over/under "twice the average price" (there used to be a "they paid this much" graphic that should the # in various price ranges that might be adaptable for this purpose)

If I did have that analysis I think I could show that the loss of sales volume in the top end (ie higher $$ than twice the average price) is the biggest factor in the reduced average price AND the biggest factor in sales being 26% less than "normal" versus being maybe 15% less


Summary
TREB realty Market should be much worse given 4-5 months of unrelenting economic meltdown news.

It's not.

That's the story.

We should be pushing that counter-to-what-everybody-expects aspect.



Hope this can help .... us in the field with some re-assurances to buyers, you folks too by providing "something newsworthy" to the reporters looking for Man bites dog stories


-- Robert (Rob) Ede,
Sales Representative,
Re/Max Hallmark Realty Ltd.,
Brokerage

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