This is an interesting article in the Calgary Herald reporting on Calgary’s “obsession” with house prices.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/Business/home+price+obsession/1486088/story.html

In my experience most of our clients are not obsessed with price. However they are “aware”. Our Seller Clients are aware that they need to be aggressively priced in order to sell and our Buyer Clients are aware that there is a lot of choice which can sometimes translate into terrific value.

 

I agree with Don Campbell’s comments regarding Real Estate as a long term investment and that we should be looking at the market through a telescope not a microscope. I also agree that the market is “just taking a breath.”

I think trying to time the purchase and sale of Real Estate as an investment or “flipping” is a little like day trading in the stock market, suitable only for a select few who have a high risk tolerance and who have the ability to hold their investments if the market turns. However with a Real Estate investment the property can be rented to mitigate a loss and to service the debt. Plus we all have to live somewhere and I would much rather own my home, even if I could have paid less for my home today than when I bought it. Unless I need to sell, as with my stock portfolio, any loss is only on paper.

I also think that good Realtors should analyze at the monthly numbers. Not mentioned in the article and I think of interest to everyone looking at the Calgary market is that the MLS median price for the last four months has been $340,000 in December, $340,000 in January, $342,000 in February and $340,000 in March. The average price for the same period has been $373,761, $373,978, $379,060 and $379,363.

I’ll leave the long term predictions to the economists but four months of consistent median and average prices when we have had almost a steady drop in values since August of 2007 is definitely a positive factor. Is this the beginning of the end of the price slide? Only time will tell…

Hope this helps,

Susanita de Diego