I just received our community newsletter this week – in the mail. As always, there's a full-page advertisement from one of the real estate Associates that occasionally has listings in the neighbourhood. I was embarassed for this agent.
I always wonder why someone spends about a thousand dollars advertising 8 homes that are probably no longer even on the market since the print deadline was 7 weeks ago. But, I digress.
He's my point: The statistics themselves need interpretation and should not be taken as gospel. It's said in the advertisement that the average days on the market for a home in this community for all of 2010 was 39. And the average selling price of a bungalows was $529,257. Okay that's pretty cool. Homes are selling fast and they're being sold at more money than even at the peak of real estate market in Calgary (2007). Right? Not so fast!
Let's look at those numbers.
Firstly, average "days on the market." When the typical buyer, seller (or consumer)...