Official January 2009 Edmonton stats

Well the stats are out. The sales were better than December, but much lower than January of 2008 (off 40.9%) there were 730 sales in January versus 608 in December. The positive spin that has been put on this is that the unit sales number has went up month over month, but December was a record low for unit sales.
Analogy: So, it is kind of like saying I upgraded my car from a Gremlin to a Pinto. No offence to Pinto owners out there.
There is good news though. The listing inventory is sitting at 6573, in 2008 we were already up to 8284 homes for sale by the end of January. That means we added 4% to our listing inventory in the month of January. To put that into perspective, our listing inventory grew by 12.7% in January 2008. So, after polishing my crystal ball and if this pace continues my bold prediction is that our listing inventory will hit 7600 homes for sale in May. This inventory level is a balanced supply for our population as long as we see normal sales volume. To sum up, January sales bad, January listings good.