Ask a Wahi REALTOR®: How Do You Educate Buyers About Local Market Shifts or Price Trends?

Wahi Realtors share resources and advice on how homebuyers can keep up to date about the latest developments in the Canadian housing market.

By Josh Sherman | 4 minute read

A good Realtor will provide a homebuyer with a variety of resources to keep informed.

Educating homebuyers is one of a Realtor’s core responsibilities. That’s no small feat, given how quickly housing-market trends can change. “It can shift on a dime,” says Anne Alkok, Wahi’s Broker of Record. “An active Realtor will be able to spot shifts in market conditions early,” she adds. To give buyers a sense of what to expect from their Realtor during their house-hunting journey, we turned to Alkok and other Wahi Realtors. We asked the Wahi team how they educate buyers about local market shifts and price trends and got pointers on what homebuyers should look at (and avoid). 

1. Comparables  

Comparables, or comps for short, are recently sold listings that are similar to currently listed properties. They’re used as a point of comparison to estimate what a currently listed home might reasonably sell for. “Typically agents will look for similar homes in the same area — the closer the better — so they have the same access to amenities and school district,” Alkok explains. They  will consider the size of the home, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, whether or not the basement is finished and if there’s a garage (single or a double). “We’ll also look at other factors like whether it backs onto a shopping plaza green space or a busy street,” Alkok notes.

2. Bidding Trends 

Wahi’s Market Pulse tool is a resource that Alkok always recommends to her clients in the Greater Toronto Area. The tool gauges homebuying competition across approximately 400 neighbourhoods in the GTA by comparing the differences between list and sold prices. In doing so, it identifies where homes are most likely selling above or below asking.

Such a hyper-local focus is helpful because certain neighbourhoods may be over or underperforming the overall market trend. “Even though it may be a buyer’s market at large, there could still be little pockets with multiple offers,” Alkok explains. Wahi Realtor Barb Funt, who has 25 years of experience in the market, says homebuyers shouldn’t get distracted by headlines in the news.  “Pay less attention to the media and more attention to the numbers and data,” she adds.

3. Historical Prices 

Current market conditions aren’t the only ones to consider when consulting data or purchasing a home. For most homebuyers, it’s a longer-term investment, so historical price trends can provide valuable context. For instance, if a buyer is nervous about entering the market during a downturn for fear of making a bad investment, comparing prices over the past decade or two can put them more at ease. “For hesitant buyers, that’s an important thing: to know where prices have gone in the past,” says Funt. In the long run, Canadian home prices have consistently trended upward. Over the past 20 years, the median value of a Canadian home has more than tripled, according to the RPS-Wahi House Price Index, which tracks home prices on a monthly basis. On the local level, homebuyers can use Wahi’s app or website to discover previously sale prices.

4. Seller Strategies 

​​“You can educate buyers on different listing strategies that sellers can take,” says Alkok. This can help homebuyers manage their expectations. “Sometimes, sellers will list relatively close to the market value based on other comps. Other times, they will list low in hopes of generating a lot of activity and multiple offers — and that works in certain market conditions,” she continues, noting this is more common in a seller’s market. Homebuyers shouldn’t get too excited about lowball list prices in these cases.

5. Recent Experience

Wahi Realtor Michelle Ryckman tries to share her recent experiences on other deals she has worked on to inform homebuyers about what’s going on in the market. “Using those experiences with our current clients and what we’re seeing out there now, and talking about that with the client, definitely helps,” she says.