You may ask… what’s with the picture?
The real estate market is on fire in many different areas! Here’s the stats over the last 7 days in Ottawa:
Now, the key areas we need to focus on are:
- New Listings
- Price Decrease – Expired and Cancelled (combined).
- Conditional Sale and SOLD (combined).
New listings are the lifeblood of the real estate industry. Picture your favourite grocery store with no food… it gets no income or activity. BUT with the real estate industry, it creates a supply and demand scenario, and prices go up.
The New Listings are down from our usual pace in mid-January, where it’s typically around 600 – 700 over a course of 7 days. Ultimately, this means the same amount of buyers, but less to choose from, which increases price… FIRE!
So why price decrease? If there’s ‘noooo’ inventory, everything will sell. Right? Not so right. Price is still key. In this market, when you see a price decrease, it is well over-priced because the DEMAND is there in a VERY STRONG way. Make sense?
This is the same with Expired and Cancelled. The seller and real estate agent didn’t either understand the market value or didn’t care. The seller just wanted the price they wanted, no matter what, and the real estate agent listed the property. In these cases, this happens 90% of the time with cancelled and expired listings. The other 10% is where the seller was advised wrong.
So how can they improve?
Price it right to where the market is in demand for. The market will react 9/10 with multiple offers in our current state, which usually drives the price up. If it doesn’t, the seller should know the offer they received is usually the true market value of their home (there are ways to bump up the price more, but call me for that).
Finally, we end with SOLDS and Conditionally Sold. SOLD means all conditions are complete and we are just waiting to close. Conditionally Sold means an offer has been accepted, BUT there are conditions to the offer which the buyer can back out of it not satisfactory.
COVID lockdowns in Ottawa have not affected us much. It is tougher with tenanted properties (I’ve sold 3 in 2022 so far) and some sensitive sellers not allowing showings. Other than that, buyers are still buying.
The sales are quite healthy, but not every single listing is selling, so we see the inventory is slowly increasing. For a buyer to say there are no homes, that may be true in their price range, but there are over 2000 properties on the market in Ottawa today. PLUS the 425 that got added this week.
In conclusion, the reason I say the market is on fire in many areas: We still have low inventory, and sellers are skeptical to put a house on the market… so there are opportunities for sellers to profit and BUYERS need to RUN like their butts are on fire to buy before it’s gone! 😊
More to come on Friday!
Moe
