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Strategies & Market Trends : The Art of Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kidl who wrote (3211)	1/9/2022 4:57:12 PM
From: russet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10713

The statistics reported for sales of homes by the real estate boards in Canada and others relying on real estate board figures (which is most everyone else including government) are seriously flawed and over inflated. The boards calculate their figures by adding the sales prices of all the homes sold in a month and dividing by the number of homes that sold. So if the homes being sold in a month are mainly high end multi-million dollar homes in Vancouver and Toronto, then the figures do not reflect starter or mid priced homes at all. This is what has been happening in the last five years, and it has especially distorted the statistics in the last two years during covid when people in the high priced homes and condos in the big cities were moving out to the burbs and cashing in on much lower prices. The real estate boards do not correct their figures for this higher end bias, nor do they correct for market or home type bias such as the difference between downtown Toronto, the burbs and the rest of low and middle income Canadian real estate markets. The hot markets of Toronto and Vancouver and other bigger cities are the tail that is wagging the dog of house price statistics and distorting what the true prices are for low and middle income properties in all the other markets. For the last 6 months, the prices of existing homes in the starter and mid prices are falling and the sales are declining. The prices of high end homes and condos are static but mostly the very high end are selling now which is greatly distorting the monthly statistics being reported. New home figures are also included in the numbers and distort the picture because at present new homes go for higher prices than existing homes. The real estate boards are said to be doing this on purpose, to inflate commissions of the real estate agents that they represent, by trying to convince the public that all home prices are inflating rapidly thereby duping families to engage in blind bidding price wars and overpaying. The distortions are significant and can warp the true picture by several hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are services out there that act only for the buyer and correct the distorted figures to get a true picture of what a house is worth and what the best options for a buyer looking for a starter or mid priced home are. Sometimes just by moving a few blocks in a market one can save hundreds of thousands and lower monthly mortgage payments considerably.