Redline Pulse - August 2021
Welcome back to another Calgary Real Estate Market Update with us at Redline Real Estate. It's summer time - you should be outside enjoying the heat - so let’s get right into it!
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SALES SUMMARY
July 2021 had stampede back, restaurants were opened back up, and life really started to get back to normal didn’t it...so did this slow down the ferocious pace of our real estate market of 2021?
Nope!
I keep expecting to be here telling a different tale, but the momentum and strength of our market simply keeps trucking on.
In July 2021 we were just 17 sales away from the best July on record...yep another near record once again!
We had 2319 sales in the month of July, this was 26% better than what we achieved with all that pent up demand of last year.
Looking at where we sit in relation to the last 15 years, you can see again how strong it truly continues to be in terms of our overall sales.
In this graph you’ll see how we performed this year, versus 2020. The red line is this year, the blue is last year.
Last month I mentioned it looked like we may be slowing down and starting to align with the pent up demand from 2020 coming out of covid, but as you can see - we got close. However, we are now again pulling away.
It was a delayed spring last year and we are on the backside of our busy season, but we continue to outpace the sales by a considerable amount.
From this next graph you’ll see that we picked up the pace throughout the month.
This is not a normal occurrence at this point of the year.
We have been slower in the last few months yes, but as you can see here on this next graph, it's impressive nonetheless.
So what is in store for August now? Honestly, it's anybody’s guess. It does however, look like sales pace will continue to outpace the average for some time still.
INVENTORY STORY
Now let’s talk about our Inventory.
We started the month of July with 6970 total homes on the market. This was about 7% more total inventory than the prior year.
We ended up finishing the month with a reduction of 290 homes down to 6680 homes. This is the first month of the year we see a final total lower than when it started. This speaks to the seasonal change the summer months bring.
We ended the month with basically the exact same number of listings as we had at this time last year.
This was a result of higher-than-normal sales numbers as we already discussed, but also this other fact…
New listings to market in July was a total of 3296, this is a significant drop from the 4136 recorded in June.
And while sales per day increased throughout the month, listings per day held steady. This will in essence create a net decrease in overall properties on the market.
So how do we fair in relation to our recent history? Let’s pull up the 15 year graph from the Calgary Real Estate board once again.
As you’ll see our current level is nothing special. We basically have just as many years with more inventory than we have that have had less.
So again - inventory is balanced. It's the sales that continue to be the real story of our real estate.
Okay, lets transition over to the pricing picture.
PRICING PICTURE.
First of all, the average benchmark sale price in the month of July was $460,100
This is an increase year over year of 10%
This is a month over month increase of $1800 once again.
The year over year gains we’ve experienced, as described in my last few updates, has us completely erasing all of the declines we had from our peak of 2014 through to now.
It's a very good news story for Calgarians, greater Calgarians and the strength of our real estate as a whole.
Here is the graph that shows how this has changed across the various districts in the city.
All districts with those positive green arrows once again! This month’s hot spot is the SE.
And here are the breakdowns by property type.
Detached - 11% GAIN
Row Homes - 10.5% GAIN
Semi-Detached - 9.7% GAIN
Apartments - 4% GAIN AS WELL
Now due to the tightening of the market throughout the month the sales per day increasing and the listing per day being flat. We’ve also seen that the sale price to listing ratio remain very strong.
The average amount of money off list price that was achieved across all 2319 sales in July was $9200. Which equates to a ratio of 98%.
This is not a buyers market - buyers buying today need to understand the true dynamics of the market we are in or else they will only frustrate themselves and lose out on quality homes over and over again.
It's not the time to be trying for mega discounts and hoping to catch a mega discount - we just aren’t seeing this out there at all.
On top of maintaining a high sales to list price ratio, this tightening market showed up in the other 2 metrics I like to talk about.
First,
- Sales to New Listing Ratio
You can see how this has climbed from about 60% at the start of the month all the way up to 88% at the end of it. The higher the number the stronger the market and the less chance for price decreases. At these rates we can likely only expect prices to continue to stay and hold or continue even to climb as we near the fall market.
Then the tightening also showed up in our months of supply. We typically see at this time of the year that the month of supply will grow as the market is supposed to slow.
But July did not see that. See the graph
2. Months of Supply
At the start at June it's the “peak” point on this graph at about 3.5 months of supply. But on our last day of the month our weekly average showed a decrease all the way to 2.6.
This is a very quick pace and it's especially quick at this point of the year, as we are firmly in summer - not the heat of our busy market,
This has resulted in our current “days on market” average being 40.
It’s slower than June of course, but it's significantly quicker than last year where it was 53, or 58 in the year before covid hit to put it into full perspective.
Ok, so as a final summary for you all today:
Market keeps defying all odds. Calgarians are confident in making their life moves, and the market is rewarding them.
So, if you are looking to buy or sell today - go for it - there is no caution at this point. The market is healthy, it's controlled and this is when you want to be choosing to embark on a big life move.
It's always frustrating as a seller when you can’t do as you wish, and it's equally as frustrating as a buyer if you don’t have confidence in the market you are buying into.
Each market type continues to operate differently from the next, the price ranges are all acting differently and the area of the city too, so be sure you have a trusted advisor helping you in the journey to ensure you make the best decision for you and your family.
If you need a recommendation we have over 80 great agents here at Redline who would love to help you out!
If you have any specific questions please don’t hesitate to reach out. See you next month!
