Smallest year-over-year decline since 2014
Residential resale housing activity declines in the province eased last month, falling by 3.8 per cent to 4,611 units, according to the Alberta Real Estate Association.
The provincial organization noted September represented the smallest year-over-year decline since December 2014.
Meanwhile, the average MLS® residential price in Alberta rose 3.9 per cent from September 2015 to $396,646.
RECA recognized for education, communication
The Real Estate Council of Alberta (RECA) was recently recognized for its educational and communications efforts with two awards from the Association of Real Estate License Law Officials (ARELLO).
RECA, a non-government agency responsible for governing the industry under Alberta’s Real Estate Act, won an education award for its pre-licensing education course, the Practice of Rural Real Estate, and a communications award for the 2016 edition of the Advertising Guidelines.
The awards were presented at ARELLO’s annual conference in late September in Vancouver.
City needs to pave the way for small housing option
If Tiny House Hunters, the compact-sized spin-off of HGTV’s hit show House Hunters, is anything to go by, tiny homes may be coming to a neighbourhood near you. That is, if the neighbourhoods near you are in the United States.
Up north, however, the question of whether tiny houses will be fully embraced by Calgarians is up for debate.
With their limited size – usually around 400 sq. ft. or less – tiny houses often come at a fraction of the price of their traditional counterparts. Though prices vary from builder to builder, Kijiji listings for tiny homes for sale in the Calgary area range from about $17,000 to $39,000. (more…)
A guide to distinguishing average, median and benchmark prices
Sellers and potential buyers in today’s residential real estate market can be understandably excused if they are confused about what’s happening with housing prices.
After all, for both, price changes in the market are supremely important. Plus, CREB® gathers price information that, to the untrained eye, can tell different stories.
For example, in February, CREB® reported the benchmark price in the city for all MLS® properties that were sold was $445,000, or down 3.45 per cent from February 2015. However, the average MLS® sale price increased by 2.72 per cent to $472,529 while the median price was unchanged at $420,000.
From top to bottom, that’s a difference of close to $30,000.
“It’s looking at values based on criteria such as square footage, total bedrooms and bathrooms, location, property type.”
So what should one look at if they are either selling a home in this tough market or hoping to buy one?
A good start would be by looking at what each price category entails, said CREB® chief economist Ann-Marie Lurie. For example, the median price looks at every sale that has occurred in the market, ranking them from lowest to highest. The median price is the midpoint of all the sales.
Lurie said the average sale price is adding up the total dollar sum of the purchases divided by the number of total sales. (more…)
The Alberta Real Estate Foundation (AREF) is partnering with the Alberta Emerald Awards to sponsor the Shared Footprints Award celebrating excellence in land use.
The Shared Footprints Award, which recognizes excellence in Integrated Land Management (ILM)—a strategic planned approach to managing and reducing the human-caused footprint on public and/or private land—was created in 2009 in partnership with Alberta Sustainable Resource and Development. (more…)