Jan 10, 2011 // by Chad Moore

Calgary Real Estate Board (CREB) released December’s statistics last week . I have chosen to highlight several statistics that I believe my community will be interested in. Before we dig into the numbers, lets review what these statistics mean.

Sales to new listings ratio

Yes this is a ratio which means it is a simple calculation. Take the number of sales divided by the number of new listings for that given month and voila, you have a ratio. If the sales to new listings ratio is 1.00 or 100% that would mean all new listings that entered the market were sold.

Absorption

This one is a little more difficult and not as commonly understood. To find the absorption rate you would take the current inventory of homes for sale and divide it by the pace of sales from the previous month. The absorption rate tells you how long it would take to sell all current inventory, shown in months.

Median price of a single family home (SFH)

To find the median you would take the middle number between the highest and lowest home sale price. For those of you (like me) who forgot the difference between mean, median and mode -> mean is the average and mode is the number occurring most often. Got it, good.

The median sales price of a single family home (SFH) in Calgary continues on a downward trend since peaking last summer. The absorption rate has been steadily decreasing for several months now.
Inventory has been leaving the market, but is still up year over year. If inventory begins to increase in the coming months we could see buyers again heading for the sidelines waiting for prices to decrease. I am taking the ‘better to be prepared than not approach’ for this Spring market. See Buyer Protection Plan

For more information check out http://www.mysavvybroker.com/archives/506