Home sales continue to plummet in most parts of the country, and with the decline has come a new reality for organized real estate: a drop in how much money everybody is making.
There are no official statistics on revenue the industry takes in, but December transactions from the Canadian Real Estate Association show the dollar volume for the month was down almost $1.379-billion from a year ago. Using a 5% commission rate, the industry standard, you get almost $70-million in lost revenue for realtors in December alone.
The housing market may not have crashed in terms of prices, but for the agents there is little doubt it’s getting tougher out there.
“It all really depends on where,” said Gregory Klump, chief economist at Ottawa-based CREA, about how agents are being affected by the slowdown. “If you are in Victoria, sales are down 5% for the year. You can be sure their members are hungrier. In Vancouver, it’s not the heady times in 2012 they were in 2011 because activity was down 23%. If you are looking at Calgary, realtors are having a real good time.”
The numbers don’t lie. December was tougher in Vancouver. There was $800.8-million in sales, a 31.6% drop from the $1.17-billion in sales a year earlier. In Toronto, sales dropped to $1.77-billion from $2.13-billion, a 17.1% decline. Compare that to Calgary, which had $563.8-billion in activity in December, a 14.6% increase from the $492-million a year earlier.
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