Welcome to the new blog.
As you can see from the very first post, I reserved this name a long time ago. My old blog, probably one of the very first real estate blogs in Calgary, was started at a time when most of these platforms didn’t exist. I’m quite impressed with the WordPress platform, having been using it for many years with my Ski blog. I’ll be fine tuning this as we go along, so bear with me if there are any glitches.
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Pending sales no longer reported
Pending sales(also known as conditional sales)are no longer required to be reported on MLS. Too bad. It was a wonderful barometer of things to come.
How does this affect you? If you’re shopping on MLS for a home, you could easily be wasting your time because the home you’re looking at may already be conditionally sold, and the buyers are just waiting for financing, home inspection, or any other conditions to be cleared up. It generally takes a week for this to occur.
As near as I can tell, only about 70% of pendings are showing on MLS. Today, with 294 SFH pendings showing on MLS, would actually mean there are closer to 420 sales on the books. Last year on this date, when the number was accurate, we had 291 pendings.
The guessing game
If we can put any faith in my numbers, what should we expect over the coming week? The median list price of pendings is at $424,900. Considering that homes are selling, on average, for 97% of list price, we can expect the median price to hold steady at today’s $412,000. Sales, however, should be up substantially compared to last year.
Bob's real estate blog 
Condo sales were lagging in the early part of March, but have come alive in last few days. It now appears that we’ll surpass last year’s sales for March which were 581. The condo pendings have increased 70% since the first of the month.
Sales are up 23% in March compared to the 3-year average. With tougher rules coming in for buyers trying to obtain financing, is it creating a last-minute rush? Is that why sales are up so much? Read more about the new rules
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/03/19/more-mortgage-transparency-needed-to-combat-high-household-debt-osfi/
Should we expect slumping sales and prices after the new rules are implemented?
I would guess yes we will. It has happened every time before when they changed the mortgage rules. Initial rush then a drop in prices and sales.
By the way, I am glad to see you have followed through on legal action against Squidly. You should be commended.
Thanks. It’s about time he was held accountable for his defamation. -Bob