top of page
Search
Writer's pictureTiff Iden

Detached Home Price in Waterloo Region Reaches the $1M Mark in December (...Or Did It?)

If you follow the local market trends, you’re probably used to seeing the monthly stats that the Kitchener-Waterloo Association of Realtors (KWAR) releases. And, you probably also saw that the average price for a detached home in our market passed $1M for the first time last month.

This is a huge milestone, and people are understandably feeling varying degrees of both concern and excitement about these numbers. Obviously, it’s a tough world out there to be a buyer right now. But if you’ve been getting ready to sell in coming weeks or months, the ever-increasing home values are something you’re likely excited about.

So when I reviewed December’s data and got ready to share the numbers with you, imagine my surprise when I saw this:


Wait, that doesn’t say $1M... But, why?


I hinted at this difference in numbers in my earlier blog post, but I wanted to elaborate on what I meant when I said that TW’s monthly market report is more locally-focused than most.

So, I pulled in one of my managing brokers, who runs through all of the data every month to put together TW’s monthly report, and he had some interesting points that I thought you’d find interesting.

  1. TW reports on median prices, not averages. This one is pretty straightforward to understand: by using the median price, you reduce the influence of crazy outliers that can really swing that average number that we’re used to seeing.

  2. TW scrubs the data for duplicate data points, which affects the way we perceive inventory in our market. Here's an example my broker: “If someone lists a house, and then cancels it, and then re-lists the home again - that shows up as two new listings, which artificially inflates the inventory data.”

  3. TW reduces the data down to local transactions only. When you’re reviewing data from KWAR, keep in mind that they report on all transactions processed through our board - regardless of property location. Here’s an example to consider: I am a member of KWAR, but I might help a friend list their second property in Hamilton. Despite that property not being located in our region, it is processed through our local board, and would therefore be included in KWAR’s monthly stats. This is the biggest reason why TW’s monthly numbers look different than KWAR’s - our team is simply reducing the data down to geographically local transactions only, and removing any non-local data from the equation to get a more accurate picture of what our local market trends look like.

This is NOT to say KWAR’s data is wrong - they are just using different metrics and their data is based on sales volume by membership. Our TW data is also missing sales from brokerages outside of our board who opt not to list on the local MLS, but that’s a whole other blog post for another day...


Regardless of which numbers you go by, the market is HOT with no signs of cooling. Hopefully, this post just gives you a different perspective when you’re reviewing the monthly market trends.

What do you think of TW’s approach to the market data?

If you’d like to get the monthly market report from me directly each month, shoot me a message or sign up over here to get onto my email list.



40 views0 comments

Comentarios


bottom of page