TRANSPARENCY IN REAL ESTATE & EDUCATED CONSUMERS
This week, we’re celebrating another milestone for HGR and our team! 250 weeks ago, we started this blog with a simple idea of helping our clients be the best educated consumers in the marketplace. For buyers or sellers, it’s challenging to know if you are making the right moves.
The real estate industry, historically, has been built on the concept that agents are the gatekeepers of information. That dynamic is still applicable, despite how the internet has opened up the flow of information.
Not so long ago, if you wanted to know what was happening in the local real estate market, you had to wait for the Saturday paper or know an agent that was willing to share the “bible”, their printed MLS® catalogue.
Every Friday a big bundle of catalogues would be dropped off at the office and distributed to the agents. The newest listings from the previous couple of weeks, printed in glorious black and white, with 9 or more listings on a page. Picture grainy newspaper-quality photos of the front of the house and lots of abbreviations in the descriptions (“4B/3B det w/ hdw gas fp in Lr, kit w/ new appls, pvt yard w/ new dk” – really paints a picture!). For decades, that’s what we worked with.
Clients that were loyal to me and ready to purchase would be able to borrow the previous copy, usually pretty dog-eared and with lots of notes scribbled in the margins from having shown or previewed the listing.
We were the gatekeepers to the kingdom of real estate.
Sales data was a monthly catalogue just like the MLS book that now showcased the sales for the previous month. That book never got lent out! We copied, cut, and pasted the sold listings into a separate report we created for our listing presentations and market analysis reports.
It was difficult to create any sort of meaningful report that could go out en-mass to clients to help educate them on the market. Creating statistical reports was massively time consuming and rarely done. Excel certainly didn’t exist for the mass market in the early 90’s.
The use of the word technology should be taken with a grain of salt.
The internet was made for the real estate industry.
The ability to showcase homes with high-resolution colour photos, video walkthroughs, 3D floor plans, 360° virtual tours, and even live-streamed home tours has allowed consumers to make better and faster decisions in the home buying and selling process. Yet, there is still a knowledge gap for consumers.
There is still a gatekeeper mentality in the industry, determined to control access to the information rather than play the role of facilitator and bringing educated consumers together to craft a mutually-beneficial transaction.
There is plenty of information available for active listings, with virtually every brokerage’s and Realtor’s website featuring a display of local listings, real estate ads plastering the walls of the internet and print, a growing number of third-party home search sites, and of course Realtor.ca.
What’s missing is the other side of the transaction, the sales data to explain what the market is actually paying for homes, and on what terms. Buyers, for the most part, are going into the market with little information about how the market is performing. We see this issue pinnacling now, as the variance between list prices and sale prices are dramatic – compound that with a significant number of new-to-town buyers who lack knowledge of our local area (and often, working with an agent who also doesn’t have access to the sales data).
Launched 250 weeks ago, the Guelph Weekly Sales Report was designed to bridge the knowledge gap in the marketplace.
We provide sales data to clients that register with our brokerage – many of which have been past clients, and we’ve been pleased to welcome many new readers over the years. Signing up with us allows you to see which properties sold in your neighbourhood the past week, and what those homes sold for.
It’s been quite popular with clients looking to make a move in the near future, and those who are simply curious about our local market.
So where do the next 250 issues take us?
In the next few weeks, we will be launching a new website that will allow you the ability to look at recently sold listings in greater detail – essentially, all of the information you can get for active listings, including photos, with the addition of the sale price. Plus, this site gives you the ability to look back at historical data – you can look up what homes on your street sold for over the past decade. Our goal is to provide you with as much information as you want to take in, bringing us closer to our ultimate goal of having the most informed and empowered clients in the marketplace. We aim to be your constant source of trusted real estate guidance.
Our blog will continue to explore and go deeper into market conditions. We’ll help you better understand the process, and bring more transparency to buying and selling homes.
Your past feedback has helped us dig deeper into many topics over the past 4 years. We encourage you to share your thoughts and questions with us, as we are committed to facilitating an open and ongoing conversation between you and our brokerage. Share your feedback with us in the comment section at the bottom of the page – and if you have any suggestions for future topics, we’d love to hear them!
We’re excited for the next 250 issues, and look forward to bringing you more information, deeper conversations, and a better understanding of the Guelph real estate market.
Thanks for being part of our journey,
Paul
THE PAST WEEK IN THE GUELPH REAL ESTATE MARKET
This past week in our local market, 77 homes were sold – a significantly busier week than the same week in 2020, where 50 homes sold. It is relevant to note that this week last year, we were approximately two weeks into a brand new and entirely unknown global pandemic – and our local market was already inching towards the extreme seller’s market we’re experiencing today. That being said, when we look back at the same week in 2019 and 2018, we saw 50 and 44 home sales, respectively.
The median home this past week was 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and 1,511 square feet. This home sold in 7 days for a median sale price of $715,000 – that translates to $452/sqft. Sellers negotiated 110% of the original list price.
Same week last year, the median home was significantly smaller, with 3 beds, 2 baths and 1,269 square feet. In contrast, this home sold in 10 days for $543,500 – that’s $424/sqft and 100% of the original list price.
68 of the 77 homes sold this past week went at or above list price (that’s 88%; last week we saw 87%). Compare that to the same week last year, where 50% of homes sold at or above list. In the past few weeks, we have talked about pricing strategies, specifically moving away from deliberate underpricing to drive competition and prices, and towards accurate (albeit, still record-high) pricing. While we are starting to see more homes listed at prices that are (presumably) much closer to the final sale prices, there were still a few notable price variances this week.
25 of the 77 homes sold this week (nearly a third) sold for over 115% of the list price. One home in particular, a 760 sqft condo built in the 1970s, sold for over 140% of the list price. This property sold at $553/sqft – the nearly identical unit right next door sold for $466/sqft just a month ago. The lowest list price to sales price ratio this week landed at 98% – a lovely but dated bungalow in a great neighbourhood, listed for nearly $730,000 (or, $624/sqft – remember, the median sales price per square foot this week was $452/sqft).
It’s clear that the Guelph real estate market is facing another problem on top of lack of inventory: pricing. The list price to sale price discrepancies in our local market only exemplify how important it is for realtors and consumers to be educated on our local market.
You’ll find the details of the past week’s sales in the weekly reports (find the link in your email), and if you’re not a subscriber, sign up below to receive exclusive access to this sales data.
NOT A SUBSCRIBER?
Sign up for our weekly blog and receive up-to-date information on local market conditions, plus receive exclusive reports with each week’s homes sales & sales price, for all of Guelph’s neighbourhoods and nearby cities. Sign up below to get instant access to this week’s sale prices.
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Contact listing agents for inquiries & showings:
