House passes deal to raise U.S. debt ceiling
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a deal to increase the country's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling for 22 months, less than 24 hours before a deadline that could have led to the first-ever federal government default.
Trans Canada Highway re-opened between Lake Louise and Golden
Traffic has resumed on Highway One following a rock slide.
The Chinese Menu Effect
Picture yourself at Chinese Restaurant - there are pages and pages of menu items that add up to hundreds of possible meal choices. You come with the best intentions, hoping to find a new favourite, but eventually become overwhelmed with the selection and go for your old familiar standby.
I read an interesting article in the New York Times today that said that increasing inventory of homes for sale can have a "Chinese menu effect" on the housing market. There is so much to choose from it becomes overwhelming and buyers decide the place they're at right now ain't so bad after all. It talked about home owners having their homes staged and prepared to sell, realizing that they loved their homes and staying put.
Kit Yarrow, professor of psychology and business at Golden Gate University who studies consumer behaviour said:
"People are making long-term commitments, and they have limited vision into the future,” she said. “That’s what the market is giving us right now. Fear of loss is super powerful to consumers — that fear of losing your house, or your money, is keeping them jittery a lot longer. It makes sense that people will think a lot longer about selling their house, even pulling out at the last minute.”
Earlier this year we saw many buyers coming into the market because of changes to the lending rules in Canada and historically low interest rates. Perception is often stronger than reality... When you consider interest rates are currently lower than they were in June '07 and '08 and only .14% higher than '09 it can't just be rising rates that are quickly cooling our housing market in Edmonton.
Sometimes you need a little push before you'll jump in, and it seems there are no "artificial pressures" pushing people to make a move right now. Sheldon refers to this as the base demand - where the sales are only influenced by people who would be moving regardless of the market. We saw this in the summer of 2008 and we are seeing it again now.
Edmonton Real Estate Market Weekly Update – June 11, 2010
EdmontonRealEstateMarketUpdate
Here is our update on the Edmonton real estate market. (Previous week’s numbers are in brackets). For the past 7 days:
New listings: 599 (594, 504, 610)
# Sales: 271 (245,245, 303)
Ratio: 45% (41%, 49%, 50%)
# Price changes: 421 (412, 332, 396)
# Expired/Off Market Listings: 173 (302, 142, 149)
Net loss/gain in listings this week: 155 (47, 142, 158)
Active listings for single family homes: 3185 (3083, 3045, 2972)
Active listings for condos: 2212 (2151, 2147, 2108)
The REALTORS® Association of Edmonton is reporting 599 sales so far this month, which should put us around 1700-1800 for the month (below average). The average residential sale price sits at $337k (down $2k from last month), single family homes at $384k (down $4k from last month) and condos at $244k (down $4k from last month).
Edmonton residential real estate listings and sales
Inventory continues to climb, we are well above last year's levels but still well behind what we saw in 2008. We expect to see lots of expired listings by the end of this month which could bring inventory down a bit, we'll have to wait and see.
Edmonton single family home inventory
Looks like it's going to be a beautiful weekend in Edmonton, hope you enjoy it!
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As you can see the blog has a bit of a different look and feel today. We have switched from Typepad to Wordpress. Over the next few days we’re going to have a lot of little changes with the design as we tweak things. We also have plugins to install (eg. the comments). Thanks for your patience while we fine tune and we hope you like the new site. And thanks also to Foliovision for making the transfer from Typepad to Wordpress easy!
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