Members will notice a few changes have been made to the statistics released by the REALTORS® Association of Hamilton Burlington.
The first difference is that we are going back to reporting all transactions that go through our MLS® system. Last year, we reported only transactions on properties listed on our MLS® which were located in the RAHB market area. We reported that way because we noticed there was serious skewing in the number of listings on properties that were not located in our area but were going through our MLS®.  To include that information would have provided an incorrect picture of what is considered real estate activity in our area.
The situation which led to the skewing has been resolved, and we have decided to return to the “old†way of reporting MLS® activity to the media and to our members. Doing so should resolve issues where what we reported did not match what our stats programs showed and what CREA released about our area.
The second difference is we are now reporting seasonally adjusted data in addition to the actual numbers of listings, sales and average sale price. Why seasonally adjusted data?
Seasonal adjustment of data removes normal seasonal variations, enabling us to see what trends are present or changing. Unless the data is seasonally adjusted, there is no way of knowing to what extent, say, increased activity in March over April or even six months ago is due to weather changes or economic fundamentals such as changes in interest rates, employment or consumer confidence.
Seasonally adjusted data is produced using a complex computer program that identifies regularly occurring seasonal components based on the behaviour of several years of data. Our seasonally adjusted data is provided by CREA, which has partnered with Statistics Canada to produce highly credible statistics to us and to other real estate boards and associations across Canada.