Market Update

 August in our beautiful valley brings us warm summer days to be enjoyed and ever cooling evenings. Our local real estate market continues towards a more balanced state, with single family home listings up by 25.0 percent and sales up marginally by 5.95 percent. Average home prices decreased from  $504,912  in the month of June to $479,714 in the month of July, while the average price of a single family residential home to date for 2007 is $464,430. “Canadian Housing starts in July continued their gradual decreasing trend as both multiple and single-detached starts declined,” said Bob Dugan, Chief Economist at CMHC’s Market Analysis Centre. The lower level of housing starts this month is consistent with our forecast of a gradual easing in the pace of new home construction in 2007 caused by rising prices and slightly higher mortgage rates. The seasonally adjusted annual rate of urban starts decreased 5.7 percent to 181,800 in July, compared to June. Urban singles were down 2.7 per cent to 89,700 units in July, while multiple starts decreased 8.4 percent to 92,100 units. In July, seasonally adjusted urban starts decreased in four out of five regions. Urban starts registered an increase only in Ontario where they rose by 4.6 percent. There was a decrease of 12.8 percent in Quebec, 9.3 percent in the Prairies, 8.1 percent in British Columbia, and 3.8 percent in the Atlantic region. Urban single starts were up in Ontario (2.8 percent) and the Atlantic (6.4 percent), while urban multiple starts declined in all regions except for Ontario. 

ACTIVE LISTINGS

Res.

Mobiles

Strata

Lots

SUMMARY OF RESIDENTIAL SALES

2007

2006

243

94

59

36

A FEW MORE REAL ESTATE STATS!

SALES BY TYPE
Year to Date

 2007 

2006

38

Internet Real Estate Use Jumps 13 Percent

A report prepared by Comscore Media Matrix shows that the internet traffic on Canadian owned and operated real estate web sites, including mls.ca and sia.ca, has increased 13 per cent since June 2006. The report also shows that Canadians visit real estate web sites more than internet users in 15 other countries, including the United States. 31 per cent of all Canadian adults visited a real estate web site in the past year, the highest reach of all countries monitored by Comscore. That compares to 29 percent of all adults in Britain, 25 percent of all adults in China, and 23 percent of all those 18 years of age and older in the United States. The Comscore report says that in the period between June 2006 and June 2007 the average of unique visitors per month increased by 18 percent on sia.ca, by 6 per cent on mls.ca, and by 5 percent on the ICX.CA web site. In that one year period the time spent on mls.ca has grown by 15 percent, while the number of pages viewed has jumped 32 percent. The Comscore report also notes that the number of visitors each month switching between the English mls.ca and French sia.ca web sites has dropped in that one year period. The report also shows that in June 2007, the greatest number of visitors coming to mls.ca and sia.ca from search engine sites are coming from Google. (CREA 03/08/2007)