I’m originally from the United Kingdom where real estate sales commissions have always been lower than those that we find here in Canada.

Why?

REALTORS® have historically provided higher levels of service in our Edmonton market than estate agents back in the UK and in Europe generally. However, most home buyers purchase directly through the seller’s agent. Whilst our market favors buyer agents, meaning there are 2 agents to pay, commissions will likely remain higher.

On a global level, commissions are trending down. According to one study I found by Natalya Delcoure & Norm G. Miller there are only 2 markets where commission have gone up, i.e. Hong Kong and Japan where buyer brokerage has been introduced.

Here some examples of typical…

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Market Overview

After spending almost a year showing our client Gayle Monsma around the downtown condo market, we recently had the pleasure of assisting Gayle with the purchase of a wonderful unit in Seventh Street Lofts. Situated at 10309 107 Street NW Edmonton, Seventh Street Lofts has an interesting history.

The development was handled by Dub Architects and is comprised of 3 phases. Phase 1 and 3 are based on renovated earlier structures. The second and middle phase is new construction.

Phase 1 consists of a converted John Deere warehouse first constructed in 1929. This phase offers 40 units in total of which 20 are double bedroom units. Phase 2 provides 36 units and this part of the project provides direct access to the street in some…

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Situation

Helen and Nam are sophisticated and smart people. They are successful in their careers and early next year they will move into a larger home. Therefore, they had to decide how they were going to sell their existing home. Helen and Nam did not want to pay expensive commissions requested by traditional REALTORS®. They chose instead to purchase the Comfree program. Helen and Nam had never sold a home before. After a couple of months without success, they finally realized that effectively marketing and selling a home can be far more difficult and complicated than simply purchasing a ‘do it yourself’ home sale program. Helen and Nam started looking around for smart alternatives. The flat fee program offered by Vital Home Realty was an obvious…

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This is our latest home offering in Walker a popular, newer community on the southside of Edmonton. On the outside the home might look small. Walk in and its little like the Tardis from Dr. Who. It feels so much bigger than the outside would suggest. The owners spent a little bit extra on things that give the home a semi luxury feel including hardwood, stainless appliances and higher end tile work. For all of the details please click here.

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In the metro Edmonton area lots of folks just love Halloween. Perhaps it’s a family tradition? You put up those inflatable spiders, ghouls or Frankenstein like monsters on your front lawn. You festoon your windows with witch shaped stickers and some of your tricks make a loud noise.

It’s fun, isn’t it?

What if we told you that these most of these things could hurt your chances of selling your home, particularly this year when inventory levels are high and sales values are down. See our September market report for details.

Our advice?

1. Avoid obstructing the view of the home, making it scary or associating it with death, (picture  those tombstones that some folks install). These things just give the wrong impression.

2. Avoid placing…

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Before you sell your home, you should learn about the distinct kinds of home buyers available to you. Together, these different buyer groups form the ‘whole’ market.

Try to think of the home sale market like a ‘layer cake’. Each layer has particular characteristics and the quality of the buyers you meet and your outcome may be affected by which layer you sell into.

We like to think of these layers as:
- Retail layer,
- Wholesale layer and
- Sub Wholesale layer

Here is a quick overview of each layer:

Retail Layer

This is the top layer of the market, where most homes and condos are sold.

In this layer, you will be exposed to the highest quality ‘retail’ buyers.

Retail buyers are expecting to see well-prepared homes, they expect to enjoy…

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Situation
After many years of loving life in Canada, family commitments back in their home country of Romania forced Iilie and Cecilia to make the choice to sell up and go back to the ‘old country’.
Recouping every dollar of equity was important to them as the move back was going to be expensive.
They saw no value in paying traditional REALTORS® expensive commissions and in 2016 they purchased the ‘sell by yourself’ program available from Comfree. After 6 months of languishing on the market, Iilie and Cecilia gave up and took the house off the market.
In mid 2017 they decided to try again. They realized that the Comfree program was not going to work for them. However, they were not keen to pay over $16,000 in commissions required by many traditional…

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Summary:

The market took an interesting turn in September. Days on market was up, inventory levels are high and prices declined. Could this be a great time to buy?

Days on Market:


In September 2017 most home sellers put their homes under contract in 55 days, up one day from September 2016. Frankly given the elevated levels of inventory, we are not surprised that the market would slow a little. Buyers simply have more time to pick and choose their next home.

Numbers Sold:



988 homes sold in Edmonton during the month of September 2017, compared to 1090 homes sold in 2016. Does this mean more people are holding off and renting instead? Current inventory is also high. At the end of September 2017 there was 6308 homes for sale across…

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