City's real estate market enjoys sales boom
Multiple offers are becoming the norm as activity takes off compared to last year
Resales in Edmonton jumped by triple-digit percentage points in March, year over year. But realtors add the figure only paints part of the picture of just how enthusiastic buyers in the market are right now.
“It's pretty crazy,” says Nathan Mol, realtor with Liv Real Estate in Edmonton. “As realtors on the ground, the numbers tell one piece of the story, but not everything — there's more nuance to it.”
Still, the March sales figures are impressive, says Tom Shearer, the chair of the Realtors of Edmonton Association. “I haven't experienced a March that busy in my career.”
All told last month, resales grew by 110 per cent from March last year, and up more than 52 per cent from February of this year. In all 2,441 transactions took place in the Greater Edmonton Area in March.
Prices also jumped significantly with the average price of a home (including all home types) up almost 14 per cent year over year to $391,000.
Demand remained strongest in the single-family detached home segment with sales up more than 118 per cent year over year. The average price also rose about 13 per cent year over year to almost $458,000.
Mol says the surging sales are in part a reflection of how frozen up sales became in March of last year when the pandemic struck.
Still, he notes the enthusiasm among buyers remains high despite new listings increasing more than 55 per cent from the previous month. As evidence, he points to how many homes are seeing multiple offers from would-be buyers.
“Multiple offers are the norm now and not the exception,” he says, adding the market has finally shifted to favouring sellers after leaning in favour of buyers since 2015.
Additionally, the average days on the market for single-family detached homes has fallen dramatically. The long-term average for the busiest month of the year, June, is 36 days on the market, and between 45 to 65 days for other times of year.
But this past March the average fell to 18 days.
“Now that 18 days is faster than you think because the sales get reported once the lender approves the financing,” Mol says, adding this takes about 10 days given how busy lenders are recently.
“Realistically the property is on the market about eight days, and some are selling even faster.”
Shearer notes for all housing types, average days on the market has also fallen significantly though not as much as single-family homes. For the last few years, the average had generally been rising, reaching as high as 80 days on the market at the depth of the housing slump.
“Then when we got to June last year, it started going down again,” he says. More recently the average fell below 40 days for all types “for the first time since I've been tracking it since 2015.”
What's more, Shearer says 525 properties — about 21 per cent of all sales — sold above asking price. That said, he believes the market is still recovering with some sellers not able to get the price they need to make their money back on their original purchase made during the last market boom.
“So I think there are still a lot of people who are not getting what they need, but looking at the average selling price, I'd say we're close to the most recent high points in the market,” Shearer says.