Sunday, May 6, 2012

Fraser Valley

April Stats


5% less sales than last April


7% more listings than April 2011


6% more inventory than April 2011


2nd lowest sales for an April in the last decade


SFH

Average price down 8.1% YOY!!


Median price down 3.7%


And yet MLS HPI Benchmark is up 5.3%- huh!


Look at South Surrey/White Rock. Half as many sales as last year, average down, median down, benchmark up!


Very odd. To have the median and average down so much YOY and yet the benchmark up so much. We will let that go without comment and assume that they have used some sort of reproducible methodology to calculate the benchmark.


Sales to listings is 14%. Well into buyer's territory - see the graph that they have near the end of the stats presentation

6 comments:

  1. Canadians should be outraged at the hpi index. This is one of the biggest scams ever concocted by the industry. It's time that the re boards came out and provided even more transparency to their methodology. To see hpi and median/average so far apart without even a mention of the discrepancy in the press release (which is largely what the public consumes) is negligent at best.

    I see a marketplace investigation in the FVREB's future.

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  2. I am happy that the board has re-engineered the index to soothe the sheeple. Just one more trick out and done with. Up 5.3%? That's great. That and the scam Diane Francis unearthed of foreigners buying and flipping condos without paying taxes will keep the lineups going around the block for the other 20 condo developments planned for my neighbourhood. Maybe they'll build 30 new condos instead? It's going to take a lot of greater fools to bury this mania. We don't want word getting out now.

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  3. Didn't NAR overestimated real estate sales by >14% from 2007 to 2011? Be it a human error or a human vice, karma didn't come back to bite them in the a$$.

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  4. From the graph on page 7 sales are tracking 2008. I think this is partially due to bad weather. It wouldn't surprise me to see a sales spike in May and June, with all trumpets blaring. Doesn't change the big picture at all. If anything, it will result in more listings. People will be calling bottom all the way down. And if we don't get a summer spike, it's crash time.

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  5. Well lets think about it what would it take for such a huge discrepancy between these metrics.

    The HPI is supposed to measure the change in price of the standard FVREB house.

    If the average is down and the median is down, then it would only work if the houses being sold are below 'the standard house' by a long shot. In that case the average and the median could be down so much and the HPI flat.

    However for the 'standard' house to be UP, defies my logic completely. It would suggest that despite the huge MOI, the drop in all the other metrics and the 14% list/sell ratio- the standard house has gone up in price.

    Maybe it is just statistical oddity or someone adding things up wrong (if it happened in NASA- it can happen at the FVREB) or maybe I am missing something- very possibly

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  6. My guess: In a low sales market, high quality places move, and low quality don't. Quality is something that isn't just about age of the structure, square footage or location, etc. So as sales drop, HPI can actually go up since only the higher quality places sell. This is an effect that won't last long.

    Don't be surprised to see teranet pointing down over the same time period when it eventually comes out.

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