Consumers confused about reports #leduc

Happy New Year!  Good to be back into the swing of things—came across this article, thought I’d pass it along!

On the day that the Edmonton Journal headline reported that the average home in Edmonton had increased by 9% the REALTORS® Association of Edmonton put out a news release that said that single family homes had dropped in value by 2.5%. Consumers were understandably confused.

A subsequent story in the newspaper tried to set it right and both REALTOR® president Westergard and the City's tax men were struggling to explain the difference. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/Edmonton+area+house+prices+continue+slide/4068204/story.html.

It seems strange to say that despite the apparent conflict, both numbers are accurate. The City of Edmonton uses prices as they existed on July 1. Their view would be based partially on the sales average numbers reported by the RAE for the month ending June 30. The REALTOR® report was based on year end numbers for prices for the month of  December. In the six months between the two reports, housing prices dropped, creating the discrepency. Another complicating factor is that real estate association prices reflect the entire Edmonton marketplace including all surrounding communities whereas the City report only considered property values within the City of Edmonton proper. Since outlying communities generally have lower prices they drag the RAE average prices down slightly.

Here are the actual numbers from the RAE database for average Single Family and Condo prices in the City of Edmonton only as recorded on June 30 and December 31 in 2009 and 2010.

	SFD	% Change	Condo	% Change
June 2010	401,475		238,163
June 2009	372,749	+7.70	245,692	-3.06%
Dec 2010	362,294		221,083
Dec 2009	377,228	+3.96	236,754	-6.62%

The above numbers do not include duplex, townhouse and miscellaneous residential property that may be included in the City's calculations.

I hope everything is clear now.