Today, I received an email from a “credible” source with a report that had the headline that reads, “Condo prices see largest decline in over three years.” It included some fancy new acronyms, and my favorite stat of all – The Condo price forecast! WOW! I wonder if I can get an alert from them 3 months before the “bubble” bursts.
From where I stand (with all my selling agents), I see a market that has a historically low inventory, incredible demand, and soaring prices. It is certainly not currently a condo market that is in decline. There really is no report right now that has accurate market snapshot information. There have been many who have tried. Some have even made full time careers out of analyzing data and trends, but none that are really relevant to the current market conditions. The only way to decipher where the market is would be to track the following very simple data that is usually proprietary and not shared on an open platform.
How many contracts have been signed?
What are the signed contract prices?
How many units are available on the market?
How many units are slated to be put on to the market?
We have our CORE Realtime Report which tries to answer these questions, but that too isn’t completely accurate, because we don’t own a large enough market share. We can only represent a small snapshot, which we hope reflects the overall market conditions.
The bottom line is that you need to know the right agent who has enough insight and expertise to advise you accordingly.