Saturday, May 24, 2008

Bob Truman is #1

By critizing Bob Truman I let him know that he and his website are #1. It is my way of showing appreciation of a Calgary REALTOR for performing structured queries on a database I do not have access to and posting the numbers on his website.

Mostly I find that he has a 'sophisticated' way of presenting stats to lead readers to some pre-determined conclusion, with some examples below.

Days on Market.

First let's look at some history from Andrew Kyle
May 2006 Bottomed at 14
Dec 2006 Peaked at 43
April 2007 Bottomed at 24
Dec 2007 Peaked at 51

See a pattern? As this number fell from its December high following the seasonal pattern of the last few years Bob Truman posted the following in What's New:

Feb 20
With 4690 single family homes on the market, we have more than double the inventory compared to Feb 2007, yet prices continue to rise and the time required to sell a house has gone down dramatically. Over the past week, it took an average of 37 days for a home to sell. In January, the average was 50.

DOM so far in May have increased to 51 for condos and to 42 for SFH from Mike's Stats. There is has been no mention of any increase of the DOM or of the seasonal pattern.

Earlier posts on this subject here and here.


Balanced/Buyers Market.

When the consensus finally arrived that Calgary was in a buyer's market (when it was written in Calgary Herald) Bob claimed to have been saying this all along. A look at his previous postings shows that he continually referred to a "balanced" market in step with the CREB. link.

Million Dollar Sales.

So far this year Bob has given the impression that million dollar sales are down. This is important because when prices were falling from their July 2007 peak there was extra emphasis on the impact reduced sales over $1million on the average price.

From What's New:

Aug 16
This is very interesting: There was lots of concern on my blog last month that sales of homes over $1 million were distorting the average price. When you delete the million dollar sales from the mix, average prices this month are the same as July. See Under $1 million stats.

Aug 17
The Calgary housing market, while down slightly, is weathering this so-called global financial crisis very well. I have been expecting a small decrease in prices for the past three months, and this is the catalyst that finally set it in motion. Depending on how you read the stats, prices have changed very little from July. It's just that there are fewer million dollar homes selling.

Aug 21
While average prices are down considerably, the SFH median price is only $400 below July at $434,600. The condo median price is $3100 over the July number. When you delete million dollar sales, the SFH average price is only $2,000 under July.

Sep 10
Despite sensational headlines that make it appear the sky is falling, the fact is SFH average prices remain unchanged from July when you take million dollar homes out of the equation. See Under $1 million. Sales of million dollar homes are very slow this month, with only 6 firm sales in the books.


Fast forward to 2008:

Jan 28
Sales of single family million dollar homes are going to be down this month compared to 2007. So far, there have been 21 sales this year. For the entire month in 2007, there were 34 sales.

Since total number of sales dropped considerably in 2008 I am going to compare the % +$million homes that sold each month (SFH% / Condo%) from CREB monthly stats. This will be a better indicator of how these sales skew the average price. In January he was indeed correct but it was fairly close.

Jan 2008: 2.12% / 0.22%
Jan 2007: 2.27% / 0.27%

Mar 2
Sales of high-end homes in Feb were down compared to last year. There were 27 sales for $1 million or more compared to 32 last year.

In fact there was a higher percentage of million dollar sales in February.
Feb 2008: 2.00% / 0.36%
Feb 2007: 1.50% / 0.34%

Mar 29
Sales of million dollar homes will be down dramatically this month compared to last year. 38 sales so far in March 2008 compared to a total of 61 in March 2007.

Instead of being down dramatically sales of $million homes increased slighly as a propotion of total sales,
March 2008: 2.75%/0.35%
March 2007: 2.69% / 0.00%

Apr 14
Total sales of million dollar homes is down this year. To April 14, there have been 110 sales. Last year, there were 146 sales.

Sales of $million homes doubled in April and were up year to date.
April 2008: 3.08% / 0.34%
April 2007: 1.50% / 0.36%

April 2008 YTD: 2.53% / 0.32%
April 2007 YTD: 1.99% / 0.23%

I conclude that sales of million dollar homes are having a greater impact on avaegr price this year so far than last.

See previous posts: here and here

He also started tracking sales below 425K as in the "low-end" range. I find it insulting to refer to sales below this amount in this way and it shows how out of touch REALTORS have become regarding the value of money. $425,000 is a lot.

Well-timed posts.


Apr 13
Last year, sales of SFH dropped from March to April. This year, April sales are 7% ahead of March sales. Condo sales are 24% ahead of March. Condo prices are on the upswing this month, and looking at SFH pending sales(avg price is $500,243)SFH prices will be heading that direction soon as well.
Here are the month end results for sales in April:

SFH sales 1363 -34.7% YOY / -3.9% MOM
condo sales 581 -30.8% YOY / +2.8% MOM

The intended impression of the post was to indicate a non-seasonal sales surge while what happened in reality is that sales were flat for the month and down considerably from 2007. Prices were basically flat except the condo median fell $3000. See post here.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good post. Bob is a realtor. That should sum it up.

The moral of the story is foolow the median price more closely versu s average price.

There is a pending sale of a 7 million dollar home in August this year which will skew the stats yet once again.

Wonder if the sale will fall through as prices decrease in the next couple of months.

Median price is trending downwards.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous at 2:19

How do you know theres a pending sale for 7 million dollars?

Jim_s said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
BearClaw said...

I will delete comments with direct and vicious personal attacks. I appreciate the support but I will use discretion to determine what stays. Some criticism is fine but take it easy. So, um... thats the comment policy ;-)

FYI - this is what I mean by the #1 title.
Has anybody noticed how slowly the inventory is climbing this month? As of May 19, there's been a net gain of 254 listings(sfh). Last year, the sfh inventory went up 835 in May.

I've noticed the proliferation(and demise) of many Calgary real estate blogs, with each one purporting to know the supreme truth about the future of calgary's housing market. There seems to be a new one each day, but none of them get many comments. They all have one thing in common: they use your website for accurate statistics, then go on to say how inaccurate you are! It's ironic, too, when they blame CREB, the media, and realtors for everything, and then they give a disclaimer, "Any action that you take as a result of information, analysis, or advertisement on this site is ultimately your responsibility." LOL LOL LOL

Carl; Do you think we will make a net gain of 600 listings before the end of May? Probably not. Instead of inventory peaking in October as it has the past two years, maybe we're at the peak right now.

Regarding all the other blogs which are critical of me, anyone who is making an impact will reap lots of controversy. I take it all in stride and like to use this analogy: I used to race cars. When running with all the others in the middle of the pack, nobody gave you a second thought. When I was winning races, everyone was gunning for me. That was good training for this. When they've stopped talking about me, I'll know that someone else has taken the lead. Information that isn't misleading is helpful, and I am confident that all the reasonable people out there can separate the wheat from the chaff. Bloggers who constantly insult others will not have any credibility with intelligent people, which are the ones I want as clients.

The publicity and business I get from all the blogs and links is substantial. Although I didn't plan it this way, my website and blog could be used as a model in Marketing 101 on how to create free exposure. -Bob


anon,

Bob mentioned that pending sale on his blog i think.

Jim_s said...

So deleting my comment does what, exactly?

My comment was not personal or "vicious", as you say. I was responding to your thread title on him being #1. What I said was true and on topic. He is what he is. A few bloggers can see thru the fake names and games, but some obviously can't.

Anonymous said...

It's me Pierre.

I sold my over inflated house in Edmonton in 4 days after listing and received 99% of my asking, then I flew to Winnipeg and purchased there because Winnipeg is probably the last market left where appreciation is present for this year (10-12% range before end 2008).
So, in a nutshell my poster name of "Pierre" was a joke because this blog is a joke.
I will not post here any longer as I must focus on the Winnipeg market where I will flip 2 or 3 homes between now and fall 2009. The, who knows? I will go where the market is good.

Have fun in your overpriced Alberta Disadvantage!
Alberta real estate market made me $284K!!!
LOL!!!

P.S. I terminated my blog the day after I sold my "overpriced shoebox" to a sucker. Got nothing to do with that gay "kool-aids" guy.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.