Welcome To The New Market!

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I wonder if Google will pick up those keywords, and I'll get a hell of a lot of emails about properties in Newmarket…

Anyways, as I mentioned on Friday, I've been tracking the post-Victoria-Day listings as I wanted to get a better sense of what properties are selling, and more importantly how they're selling, ie. with respect to under-listing and holding-back offers, or offers any time.

So let's look at what I've accumulated over the past couple of weeks, and see if we can't draw some conclusions about the market, and about where your strategy should be, as a seller…

Back toward the end of May, I shared with you, a growing trend in Toronto real estate: re-listing.

When the market began to change toward the end of April, and into early May, sellers didn't change with the market, and instead, continued to incorporate the same time-tested strategy of under-listing their properties, holding back offers, and expecting a windfall of offers, and a massive sale-to-list ratio.

But it wasn't working anymore, or at least, not nearly to the same degree.

I first wrote about the change in this blog post from Ma7 19th: "Real Estate's New Problem: Listing & Re-Listing."

Then on the Victoria Day long weekend, I took a snapshot of all the properties listed for sale, and looked up the history of each and every one of them to see how many had been re-listed.  You can read that blog post here: "Listing & Re-Listing: Is THIS The Reason For The Surge In Inventory?"

I had so much with with those numbers, that I decided I wanted to watch them in real time.

So after the Victoria Day long weekend, I kept track of every listing that came out in E01, E02, and E03 that week – May 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th.

There were exactly 120 new listings that month.

Let's analyze…

First and foremost, of the 120 new listings, 49 are sold

That's a sale rate of only 40.1%, and we're about three weeks into these listings.

Now where I'm the most curious is with regards to how the houses are being sold, ie. those houses being listed with an offer date, and those with offers any time.

Of the 120 new listings, 79 had offer dates, and 41 did not.  That's 65.8% of houses being listed with offer dates.

However, of the 41 listings that did not have offer dates, 14 were re-lists from listings that were out before Victoria Day Long Weekend.

So eliminating those 14 re-lists, of the 106 "truly-new" listings, those 79 with offer dates represent 74.5%.

And that's simply amazing to me.

74.5% of new-new listings are still holding back offers.

Even though the market has changed – no seller wants to switch up the strategy.

As I've written before: it seems as though sellers today are looking at a two-part strategy: 1) list-low, hold back offers, 2) if the first doesn't work, then re-list higher.

Now of the 79 properties with offer dates, 55 were under, $1,000,000, and 24 were over $1,000,000.

And if you want to compare the average list price of those properties – both the ones holding back offers, and the ones not holding back offers, the average list price of those holding back offers was $1,024,653, and the average list price of those not holding back offers was $1,419,384.

But back to the 79 properties with offer dates

Of those 79 properties:

35 sold
30 were terminated
3 were suspended
5 remained available
6 increased in price

That's a sale rate of 44%.

That's all properties that are holding-back offers; a mere 44% sold on offer night.

And that is the biggest difference between today's market, and that of February and March.

I submitted an offer last week for a house in Leslieville, listed at $799,900, up against one other offer, and our price was $900,000.  The other offer was almost identical, so I understand from the listing agent, and from discussing with the other buyer agent, who I know well.

That seller decided not to work with either offer, and instead, re-listed at $1,050,000 the next day.

So of the 30 properties that were terminated, 26 were re-listed immediately.  Only four of those 30 properties, that held-back offer, and did not sell on offer night, did not come back onto the market.

Of the 26 were terminated and re-listed, 23 were re-listed higher, and 3 were re-listed lower.

Of those 23 that were re-listed higher, the average increase in price was 16%.

Now here's the kicker, folks.

And this is the most interesting stat of the lot.

Of the 23 properties that were re-listed higher, after not selling on offer night, only six have sold – that's 26%.

So if you're a seller, and you're listing your property for sale (presumably under-listing), and then terminating the listing, and re-listing higher, you have a 26% of selling your property, inside of two weeks.

Just fascinating.

And yet, as we've seen – 74.5% of sellers are holding back offers, that is, when they list the first time around.

And 29.5% of those have come out at a higher price after the offer night.

Now, we should also take a look at the 6 of 79 listings that did a straight increase in their price, since that's basically the same thing as terminating and re-listing.

How many of those 6 listings do you think have sold?  Considering 26% of the 23 listings that were re-listed at a higher price sold, what would you think?

How about zero.

Yes, zero of the six.

So now let's add those numbers together: we have 23 properties terminated and re-listed higher, plus 6 that increased their price.  And only 6 sold

That's 20.7%.

So forget that 26% number I gave you above, in reference to your "chances" of selling your property after holding back offers and then terminating and re-listing higher.  Along with the properties increased in price, we're now down to essentially a one-in-five shot.

Let's switch gears now to the other side of the spectrum: the houses that did not hold back offers.

There were 41 properties that did not hold-back offers.

Of those, only 8 have sold.  That's only 16.3%.

So for all the talk about listing-and-re-listing, under-pricing, holding back, terminating, etc, it seems of the properties listed without an offer date, only 16.3% have sold – and that's a far lower number!

Of these 41 properties, 18 are under $1,000,000, and 23 are over $1,000,000.

Keep in mind that of the 79 properties with offer dates, those numbers were 55 and 24 respectively.

So in total, of the 41 properties:

8 sold
1 suspended
9 terminated
2 decreased in price
21 remained on the market with no change

Of the 9 listings that were terminated, 8 came back onto the market.

Of those 8 that came back onto the market:

1 increased the price
3 came out at the identical price
4 came out at a lower price

The most interesting of those 8 listings is the one that increased the price, without the offer date and hold-back.  I guess the sellers were being sneaky, and figured they would bring the listing out with "offers any time" but still try to get over the list price.

Of the three that came back out at the identical price, we call this "re-starting the listing."  If you're on the market at $1,099,900 for 18 days, and you don't want to reduce the price, but you want some more eyeballs on the listing, and you want to re-start the timer, you simply terminate, and re-list at the same price.  That way the "new" listing comes up on more automated searches, and on the MLS home page for agents.

As for the four properties that came out at a lower price – that's just an old-fashioned market for ya!  List a property for sale, not having any success – re-list lower.

One final stat I'll leave you with: of all the properties that sold, the average sale price was $1,049,461, and of all the properties that didn't sell, the average list price was $1,267,408.

Now you really have to read into that those stats, since the properties that sold also had an average list price of only $966,323, and of the properties that didn't sell, I'm using the list price.  Some of those may have been under-listed to try and solicit multiple offers.

But I think either way, we're seeing that lower-priced properties are selling better.

Folks – I've pulled just about as many numbers out of the accumulated statistics as I could, but if you have any questions, email me or comment below and I'll try to get to them.

Enjoy!

 

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