As the Chinese Year of the Snake draws to a close, it’s a good time to look back at how our real estate market fared in 2013.
Realtors sold 23,489 properties in the city of Calgary in 2013, with about 16,000 of those being single-family homes, 3,000 townhomes and 4,000 apartments. This is an 11% increase over the 21,204 sales in 2012.
The average time it took to sell a home dropped steadily from 50 days in January to 32 in May and then rose to 46 in December (typically a slower month in the real estate market).
The Benchmark Price in all sectors of the market saw significant growth this year and many parts of the city are at par with the peak pricing levels we saw in 2007.
The single-family Benchmark Price rose every single month in 2013 from $436,900 in January to $472,200 in December, a rise of 8%.
The townhome Benchmark Price didn’t increase every month but did see an overall rise from $283,400 in January to $307,100 in December, a jump of 8.4%.
And the grand prize goes to the apartment-condo Benchmark Price, which rose every month except for December – from $251,300 in January to $279,600 in November then dropped slightly to $278,600 in December for an overall lift of 10.9%!
The increase in prices and decrease in days on market is closely connected to the very low inventory numbers throughout the year. The absorption rate (ratio between number of sales and number of listings) ranged from 1.4 to 3.1 (months of inventory) for all sectors in Calgary throughout the year. A balanced market is 3-4 months of inventory so we were in a seller’s market all year long.
Competing offers were common in 2013. In fact, almost 16% of all of the sales last year were equal to or higher than the list price! This is the same percentage of at/above list price sales that we had in 2007 in Calgary.
In closing, I would like to leave you with this article to help kick off your 2014 with a bit of decluttering. If you are thinking of selling your home this year or even if you are just feeling motivated to simplify your life a bit, I always find it therapeutic to purge rooms, closets and storage spaces and only keep those items that you use or that have significant emotional value.
If you are looking for any more specific 2013 statistics or recent sales (i.e. for your own neighbourhood/condo complex or for the area to which you would love to move), please drop me a note and I will be happy to send them your way!
