Edmonton Listing Inventory Update

As of today, December 21/2007 there are 7382 active listings in the Edmonton area. This is down substantially from the end of November when our inventory was sitting at 8667 properties. The sales are sitting at 614 for this month. We are on pace to sell close to 800 properties for the month of December. When you look at previous years, the unit sales volume is pretty close to our historical sales volume for the month. 1,074 properties in 2006, 908 in 2005, 926 in 2004, 922 in 2003 and 837 for 2002.
For year to date numbers, up to the end of November we have sold 19,687 properties versus 20,910 by end of November 2006. So sales are fairly consistent over last year. The difference in the two years has been on the supply side with the abundance of inventory we saw in the second half of 2007.
By the end of December, our inventory should slip well under 7000, possibly closer to 6000 properties for sale. This won't be from sales outnumbering new listings, it will be the historical trend of sellers that failed to sell taking their homes off the market at the end of December. Some may try to sell again in the spring, the big question is how many will be relisting. Obviously a flood of relists in the spring pushes our market back into a buyer's market with a supply problem. My gut feel is that this won't happen, from my experience people may consider relisting, but then life happens and selling the home is put off until another year.
2008 is going to be an interesting year. My personal thoughts are that it will be a balanced market with our inventory hovering around the 5000-7000 mark. That should stabilize prices from the downward trend of the last 3 to 4 months, while not allowing prices to climb much either. Most forecasts are predicting a 1% to 5% increase in prices over the next year.