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Edmonton Real Estate Market

My condo:

45 days on the market, 5 showings, 0 offers, reduced price by 3% today to try and bump interest.
 
I had a similarly slow process with my condo a few years ago. I gave up and listed it for rent, and was immediately swamped with applications. Was quite the eye-opener to me in terms of the completely inverse markets for ownership vs. renting. Fortunately, I have wonderful tenants who take great care of the place, so I don't have to test the marketplace again for a while, at least.
 
45 days on the market, 5 showings, 0 offers, reduced price by 3% today to try and bump interest.
Bad Move -- take it off the market for a minimum of three months and then re-list it at a higher asking (I am sure that your Agent has suggested the same thing). @Gus Haynes has the right formula.
 
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I had a similarly slow process with my condo a few years ago. I gave up and listed it for rent, and was immediately swamped with applications. Was quite the eye-opener to me in terms of the completely inverse markets for ownership vs. renting. Fortunately, I have wonderful tenants who take great care of the place, so I don't have to test the marketplace again for a while, at least.

I need the LEGO money.
 
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Still amazing how bad our condo sales are…
Edmonton is behind Calgary in terms of infill development which is surprising as Edmonton's mature neighborhood's are so much nicer than Calgary's. There are very few streets in Calgary that have tree lined boulevards and the ones that are, the starting price for a 40 foot lot with a knock down house on it starts at $650K - at least. A 50 foot lot that can be sub-divided into two 25's runs about $800K. In Edmonton there are tree lined streets with boulevards all over the place and they're like $200K less. Even some of Edmonton's downtown streets have tree lined boulevards and it's an urban feature that Edmonton is doing a poor job of promoting. The tree lined streets are something that Edmonton should be using to distinguish itself from other cities because Calgary, just as an example, is not going to start ripping streets apart and installing boulevards with trees. And even if some cities have the space to start beautifying their streets like that, it's a 50 year project.
 
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I am not against renting, but some of those people renting now rather than buying a condo are about to discover their landlords can and will increase rents considerably if the market permits.

So it may be a good deal now, but that could change. There is some new building happening, but I don't think enough to absorb all the people moving here.
 
You mean akin to condo fees, taxes and which way the wind is blowing?
You can add insurance to the list of costs massively increasing. There is a huge change in the industry going on across North America. In short, they have dropped quoting down to maybe 10-20% of what they were doing before, and as a building owner you get hammered on renewal because you're no longer getting multiple quotes from other insurers.

I've seen renewal insurance go up 3X and higher because you end up having no choice. It's an interesting new business model: chase far less new business and make a killing on your existing book of business.

I would add that this is happening across all asset classes, and not just multi-res.
 
My understanding is the biggest payments by far for condo's are usually mortgage and condo fees, then taxes and insurance which are a much smaller portion of the total. So while taxes have increased by a lot they are not a big part of the total. To get an accurate overall percentage increase you would need to weigh the increase in each proportionately not just add selected percentage increases together to create a scary large number.

Of course, and this should be fairly obvious, if you have a fixed rate mortgage the change in payments from year to year will probably be zero percent unless you have to renew before rates go down.
 
The approved 4 year property tax rate increase is 27%. 8.9% this year, 7% next year, 5-6% for each year after that. That's if Council doesn't add more spending.
You might have some insights on this, would love your take if you’re comfortable sharing :) no pressure if not.

BILD advocating for more new suburbs instead of filling in the massive underused sites within the henday…but then also publicly complaining about the taxes, strikes me as confusing. Was pretty disappointed to hear Kalen on Edify’s podcast. Lots of false equivalences and exaggerations/dismissals of those who raise legitimate and fact based concerns on sprawl. She gave 0 numbers or data and instead played on identity politics suggesting “white urbanists” not wanting sprawl is pretty much racist to BIPOCs because many new suburbs are highly diverse (conveniently ignoring the many bipoc communities in central areas that experience worse transit and neighborhood disinvestment thanks to sprawl. As well as the fact that even though the new suburbs might be more racially diverse, many of those families are also higher income, see census data (funny to care about the high earning Indian doctors in windemere and not the indigenous or somali populations closer to DT, no?) And also a lame argument because so much of that is age based too. Central communities with lots of 60 year olds who have been in their homes 30 years vs new residents who have been here 5 years).

Sorry for the rant. That podcast just frustrated me so much and then it’s hard to hear that and then see BILD also frustrated by tax increases.

Are there areas BILD sees as where expenses and revenues can be changed? Seems like sprawl is sorta one of the best to reduce taxes…. But they want the opposite.
 

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