I was tempted to jokingly title this post “Its the weather” or “Boom On” but thought that some of the hyper engaged readers would not realize I was kidding so I have to say that I’m kidding when I say that here. To say that Sara and I were surprised to see the sales so low is an understatement. I still keep thinking there is some kind of mistake. This april and march have felt a lot like 2006 – our website traffic is very high, our sales are up, our listings are getting lots of showings and so on. So it didn’t jive with us when we saw the numbers.  To us the real story this month is how low sales went in comparison to previous years while prices have virtually stayed put.

So here’s the skinny as I see it. Prices have stayed the same in Edmonton because of strong competition in that $300,000 to $400,000 price range. Okay that’s nothing new right? Given the number of multiple offers I’ve experienced this spring I’m really surprised that sales weren’t higher. This suggests to me that buyers who have been in competition for a good property are not jumping to the next available property as they did in 2006 and 2007, but are regrouping and waiting for the right property.

At this time we are pretty much running flat out with our days starting quite early and not ending until 11 or later. Several times last week I stopped responding to emails and dealing with issues after 1am, so maybe its sleep deprivation that made me think sales would be higher.

It does seem strange that in the same month that Don Campbell announces “boom on” the sales are at their lowest for the month april that they have been in the last 7 years.  In all fairness he did say it would be down the road before there is another boom.  Maybe the lower sales is just the calm before the storm and we will see a significant increase in May’s sales like it did following the plateau of sales in 2006. One thing I do know is that its not the weathers fault. 

Here is how it looked in April:


Edmonton home sales

The average price was virtually unchanged in April, but is still down from last year. The median price increased slightly from $311,000 in March to $315,000 in April but is down from $326,500 last April:


April11Avg

Inventory increased more than I expected it to in April, putting us right back in line with 2009 and 2010:


April11Inventory

The number of new listings were well below last year and 2008, but still higher than 2009:


April11NewListings

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