Friday, January 11, 2008

Edmonton Comfree Stats - December

Where are they?

Update: Comfree stats posted Jan 16.

2 comments:

rj said...

Hi bearclaw,

Sorry, this is off-topic but I thought it might be worth a post of its own.

It’s a great time for home seekers in Calgary

"Calgary’s real estate prices have increased by 10.54% since the end of 2006. If you were to invest in an average house about a year ago with a 25% down payment, this investment would have netted you a 42% return on investment (ROI) even after the moderation in real estate prices. Compare this 42% ROI to the stock market in 2007 and we realize that if we would have invested in the Dow Jones Industrial Average we could have expected an average of less than 9% return. If you minus inflation and taxes you’ll be lucky to cash in a 3 to 5% return from the average stock."

Does the author really think this is a valid comparison, or is he being deliberately disingenuous? Among other things, he:
- omits costs of buying and selling
- compares a leveraged investment to an unleveraged one
- fails to account for interest expense on the leveraged investment
- counts inflation and taxes on the DJIA, but fails to count it on the home purchase (nor does he acknowledge)

Pathetic. I hope that this is not representative of the typical real estate agent's "investment" advice.

Radley77 said...

Hi bearclaw,

I hope you are having a good weekend.

I started up yet another blog focused on analysis of Calgary real estate valuations.

Calgary Real Estate Market Blog