The REALTORS® Association of Hamilton-Burlington (RAHB) reported 852 sales of residential properties located within the RAHB market area were processed through the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) System in May 2020. Sales are down 42.2 per cent over May 2019, and up 43.4 per cent over last month. The average price for residential properties was $655,418, which is up 10 per cent from May last year, and up 6.3 per cent from last month.
In the coming days, RAHB will be asking brokers of record, managers, brokers and salespersons to help us to determine the additional support and services that RAHB members need most during the pandemic.This survey will be sent via e-mail, be available for one week, and should only take a few minutes of your time.
By participating in this survey and providing us with valuable information, you could win a Realty Shoppe gift basket- valued at $50.Thank you in advance for your participation.
Effective Wednesday June 17, the Realty Shoppe will now offer curbside pick-up two days a week! You can utilize the curbside pick-up on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Just a reminder that the Realty Shoppe will be modifying service delivery with curbside pick-up to serve our members better, and to adhere to the health and safety guidelines outlined by the province.
Supply orders must be pre-ordered by e-mail at [email protected], or by phone at 905.529.5979.
Orders must be pre-paid, and payment must be on your credit card or your RAHB account. Payment by debit and/or cash is not available at this time. We apologize for the inconvenience.
A twice weekly pick-up of pre-ordered supply orders will be available each Tuesday andFriday, via curbside pick-up only, at the parking lot entry door for the RAHB offices. Entry into the RAHB building and in-person shopping is not be permitted at this time.
Curb-side pick-up: A pre-determined pick-up time will be coordinated by Realty Shoppe staff with each member. Upon arrival, the member must wait in their vehicle within the RAHB parking lot, and Shoppe staff will bring the order out of the building and place it on a designated table in order to adhere to social distancing measures.
No RAHB staff have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and RAHB staff working within the Realty Shoppe do not have COVID-19 symptoms.
The REALTORS® Association of Hamilton-Burlington (RAHB) reported 482 sales of residential properties located within the RAHB market area were processed through the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) System in April 2020. Sales are down 63.4 per cent over April 2019 and 56 per cent over last month. The average price for residential properties was $614,412, which is up 4.3 per cent from April last year, but down 6.6 per cent from last month.
A reminder that dropping off door-to-door materials is considered a non-essential service during COVID-19 under section 19 of the essential list provided by the Government of Ontario. Please hold off from dropping any materials door-to-door until the essential list is changed.
Recently, a RAHB member found their listing posted for rent without permission on an online classified website. Luckily, the member was contacted by a potential renter and confirmed that the posting was not real. Please remind your clients to be viligent when searching online websites and to refer back to REALTOR.ca for more information or to contact their REALTOR®.
If you see or are affected by a rental scam, Hamilton Police Services suggests reporting the ad to the website where the rental is posted, working with your financial institution if money has been sent, and reporting incidents to local police services. They also recommend reporting to the Canadian Anti Fraud Centre to report – please go to https://antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/. Please note there are no telephone lines for the Canadian Anti Fraud Centre at this time.
It has come to RAHB’s attention that users are posting URLs for a pre-recorded walk through or a virtual tour, rather than a Virtual Live Stream Tour on REALTOR.ca.
You are reminded of the following:
The posted URL only remains active in the time period you specified; and then disappears.
Virtual Live Stream Tours are advertised on REALTOR.ca and intended as a real time walk through of the property, with the Listing Salesperson available to answer questions at that time of the Virtual Live Stream Tour.
Below is how your Virtual Live Stream Tour is advertised on REALTOR.ca:
Pre-recorded videos should only be placed under the “Virtual Tour URL” or “Additional Images URL” in Matrix as shown below:
If you will be hosting a Virtual Live Stream Tour, you may enter the date, time and URL under “Open Houses” in Matrix as shown below:
Should you have any questions, please contact the RAHB MLS® Help Desk at 905.667.4650 or [email protected].
The Burlington City Council’s next meeting will be on Monday, April 20 at 9:30 a.m.
This council meeting will see Burlington senior staff providing an update about the financial impacts of COVID-19 and seek Council’s endorsement of a three-month strategy that prioritizes which City services will be provided through to the end of June 2020.
Financial impacts of COVID-19
A report detailing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the City of Burlington’s budget will be presented. This report will include:
Estimated revenue impacts of $7.6 million to June 30, 2020;
Estimated expenditure savings of $5.2 million to June 30, 2020;
Cash flow projections to June 30, 2020;
Future financial modelling to identify pressures, dependent on the length of the pandemic, and recovery scenarios.
Municipalities are required to approve a balanced budget; however, the City of Burlington can have a shortfall or surplus in a given year. A shortfall can be offset by:
Using reserve funds;
Increasing taxes in the next year; or
Reducing expenditures during the year of the anticipated shortfall. This is what Burlington is attempting to do to mitigate a shortfall at year-end.
The City of Hamilton has reached out to RAHB with an urgent need regarding housing for individuals and families currently in shelter and/or hotels. Please see below for a message from Paul Johnson, Director, Emergency Operations Centre at the City of Hamilton.
Dear Housing Partner,
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Hamilton is committed to supporting Hamiltonians and taking every precaution to keep our community as healthy and safe as possible.
As you may have noted during the City’s COVID-19 Virtual Town Hall on Wednesday night, keeping housing placements moving is one of ways we hope to accomplish this; connecting individuals who are at-risk and/or experiencing homelessness to support and appropriate resources, which includes permanent housing.
We need your help. The City is looking for private market rental units to fill an immediate need: to house individuals and families currently in shelter and/or hotels who could move in with minimal supports. For some people, we will be able to match them up with the Canada Ontario Housing Benefit that took effect April 1. We are asking landlords who have a vacant unit that is move-in ready to work with the City to create long term tenancies with financial support.
Working together on housing placements will achieve a number of goals:
Create more assured rental income with a longer-term tenant
Foster a sustainable investment
Provide additional supports for these new tenants
Contribute to the shared community goal of preventing the spread of COVID-19
Thanks to additional support from both the federal and provincial governments, we have an opportunity to provide financial supports in the long term to help facilitate housing plans.
If you have any available units for rent and/or would like additional information, please contact [email protected].
I want to thank you in advance for stepping in to help our community during this unprecedented crisis. We are all in this together.
The Hamilton Chamber of Commerce is asking for Hamilton’s business community to provide feedback on the impact COVID-19 has had on their business, the effectiveness of existing programs and initiatives, and options or suggestions on policy, programs and initiatives that should be considered in the short term.
To participate in the survey, please click the button below:
RAHB, as well as several other associations/boards across Canada, reported an increase in the number of sales month-over-month (actual) from February to March 2020; however, the seasonally adjusted numbers published by CREA show decreases. For example, RAHB reported a 10 per cent increase in the number of sales (actual) from February to March of this year, while CREA reported a decrease of 24.9 per cent in sales (seasonally adjusted) for the same time period.
We are working with CREA to correct any media that have not properly identified and explained seasonally adjusted data; however, this has caused confusion among REALTORS® across Canada, as well as in the eyes of the public.
RAHB has contacted CREA and asked that they:
Emphasize that their data is seasonally adjusted.
Include a clear definition of seasonally adjusted data.
Provide a clear explanation of the difference between seasonally adjusted data provided by CREA and actual data provided by boards/associations.
Focus on data at the national level, allowing boards and associations to publish regional data.
RAHB and other boards and associations use actual data in statistics releases, and refrain from focusing on seasonally adjusted data as it is quite complicated for the public to understand. CREA does provide a high-level explanation on their website – https://www.creacafe.ca/seasonally-adjusted-mysteries-revealed/.
Below are some points RAHB members can use to explain CREA’s seasonally adjusted data with clients:
The majority of regional boards/associations – including RAHB – publish raw data within their monthly market statistics reports to show the actual activity that took place within any given month.
CREA uses seasonally adjusted data to identify trends.
Seasonal adjustment strips out normal seasonal fluctuations that otherwise affect data, and levels the playing field for each month.
CREA states that using seasonally adjusted data makes every month 30 days with four weekends and no holidays.
The effect of seasonal adjustment is that it reduces readings for months which normally get a seasonal lift, and boosts them for months which normally see a seasonal slump.
Seasonally adjusted data is how governments, financial institutions and market analysts look at the figures.
Seasonally adjusted statistics result from raw data being fed into a complicated computer model.
RAHB uses actual data because:
Actual data is the raw data collected in any given time period.
Raw data shows the confirmed/real activity that took place during any given time period.
Actual (raw) data is generally easier to understand.
Publishing actual (raw) data allows REALTORS® to analyze their specific section of the market.
Just a reminder that RAHB received notice from TRREB stating that, on April 30, 2020, TRREB is retiring CONNECT.
Following the receipt of TRREB’s notice, RAHB staff have been engaged in discussions with the remaining CONNECT member Boards and Associations to explore future collaboration and data sharing opportunities via IntraMatrix.
RAHB is committed and open to reciprocal data sharing with other Ontario Boards and Associations. Currently, RAHB has data sharing agreements in place with ORTIS and the Ontario Collective. The Ontario Collective and ORTIS are in the final stages of merging their efforts and implementing a new Matrix system for all of their users. RAHB has been working with ORTIS/OC and Corelogic to test the updated data share, which will be launched with the newly merged system. Once testing has been completed, RAHB members will then have access to all ORTIS and Ontario Collective listings within Matrix.
