Every month for eighteen years, I would write a real estate market update on a few select neighbourhoods & 122 condo corporations in London, Ontario and the area, and I was doing it wrong!
No, the number of sales was accurate, prices were accurate, the days on the market were factual, and the selling price to asking price percentage was factual; I can say that as these are published publicly by The London St. Thomas Association of Realtors (LSTAR) and The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA).
Below Are Real Estate Numbers That Can Be Subjective Or Should Not Be Used
Price per square foot:
The price per square foot in a new apartment condo building with the same finishes and floor plans would be accurate. But what about finishes, floor level, view, balcony size etc? I was at a real estate listing presentation at a 16-floor condo building, and this particular model was identical to three others that sold recently. Yet, the price difference was $85.00 per square foot! Was one unit’s floor covered with gold, had kitchen appliances worth $5,000 or $40,000 or was the selling Realtor a genius and the buyer’s realtor not or was the buyer so excited caution was thrown to the wind?
Or, one of the units sold because the seller was under pressure from their mortgage lender, a marital split, or they hated the building? So, if I reported the sales per square foot for two bedroom apartment condos was $566, how accurate is that? What if a potential seller or buyer saw that, would they base their decision to buy or sell on that number?
Square footage of a house;
I know what it should be: finished living space on each level and unfinished space. I see homes listed for sale with 2700 square feet, and that is that. Does that include the basement, the attic, the furnace room, and the garage? I would say apply common sense here, but as Mark Twain said: “The reason people have so much common sense is that they don’t use it!”
Selling Price To Asking Price Ratio Percentage:
I am bad here; I would look at a condo building, townhouse complex, or house in a particular neighbourhood and write something that the selling price was 103.88% of the asking price or 98.14%. How wrong is that? One seller had five buyers who wanted that house, with multiple offers. Or, the Realtor who priced the home low or too high and it sold, whatever that percentage was to the asking price, is subjective. Or one house was a diamond in the rough, or another house the seller not only wanted to pay off their mortgage; they wanted to pay off their credit card debt and take a month holiday to never never land? Percentages vamoose!
Average or median price:
A lazy persons way of being lazy! Enough said!
I could go on and on about the mistakes I made writing about the market and quilty of spewing out numbers from organizations or associations or builders or sellers without me sifting through the odoriferous numbness of filling space on a page!
To end my confession of errors in copying so-called facts or the average bs, I vow as penance to only report the number of sales and the days on the market on my sites, and that will be all! For the real estate obsessed, I will still do my exhaustive comparable market analysis for a select few.
