Archive for January, 2012

Housing Trends: MLS® Housing Price Index coming to Calgary

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

The MLS® Housing Price Index (HPI) is coming to Calgary in February, as part of a nationwide rollout involving boards in Canada’s largest cities.  It’s an exciting new tool that CREB® has developed in cooperation with four other boards and the Canadian Real Estate Association. 

The average price in market can vary widely from month to month, depending on volume shifts in various price segments.  Reporting the average price can sometimes falsely exaggerate trends, causing confusion with your clients.

The new Housing Price Index (HPI) uses a new standard that takes into consideration such items as lot size, age of building, number of rooms and many more factors.  It’s a way of comparing apples to apples, much as the Consumer Price Index uses a standard basket of goods to determine cost of living.

What does this mean for you, the home owner?  More comprehensive and more pure data than ever before – data you can use for understanding future price trends and estimating current market values. 

What does this mean for the Corley Team? It will be an improvement to the statistics currently available to us, and we will continue to do what we have always done to value properties… by physically comparing comparable properties in person, rather than relying soley on statistics – allowing us to arrive at an honest opinion of value on your property.

The HPI is expected to become available early in February 2012.

 

Ten tips for selling your home in winter

Monday, January 16th, 2012

What makes selling a home more stressful?  Selling it in the middle of winter.

The lawn is brown, the weather is usually bad and, unlike the longer days of summer, you have less time to show it off during daylight hours.

But not everyone has the luxury of waiting until the traditional spring or summer home-buying season to plant that ‘for sale’ sign.  And while it’s true that in most areas you’ll probably have fewer buyers during the winter, you will have less competition from other sellers.

The season makes staging – the concept of showing your house at its best – even more important.  But be prepared to put a little effort into it.  It is more difficult to make something look really appealing this time of year, but if you do it right, you can really make your house stand out.   (more…)