{"id":907,"date":"2021-11-18T08:29:16","date_gmt":"2021-11-18T15:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/?p=907"},"modified":"2021-12-02T08:51:24","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T15:51:24","slug":"moving-to-yellowknife-what-is-the-trues-cost-of-a-yellowknife-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/2021\/11\/moving-to-yellowknife-what-is-the-trues-cost-of-a-yellowknife-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving to Yellowknife: What is the True Cost of a Yellowknife Home?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the challenges our Century 21 Prospect Realty buyers’ agents encounter is that when folks research our real estate market in advance of their house-hunting trips, they often develop an inaccurate understanding of Yellowknife home prices.\u00a0 Comparing houses between any two places is tricky, given how different one home can be from the next, but in most cities there are tools to assist with making apples-to-apples comparisons.\u00a0 The main tool these days is the Home Price Index, which is the analytical model the Canadian Real Estate Association uses to create its National Price Map<\/a>.\u00a0 The Home Price Index works just fine when comparing housing between larger markets, but when it comes to the North, it causes nothing but trouble.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The current National Price Map illustrates the problem perfectly.\u00a0 This month’s map gives the impression that the average Yellowknife home costs $360,030.\u00a0 Only Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick\u00a0 and Newfoundland came in lower.<\/p>\n

Well, as anyone who lives here can tell you, just because CREA says it’s so, that doesn’t make it so.<\/p>\n

There are good reasons to trust the National Price Map in bigger markets.\u00a0 Calgary and Edmonton, for example, have 10,000 Realtors between them (roughly equivalent to half the population of Yellowknife), all paying monthly fees to their local and regional boards, pooling their resources to enable, among other things, the specialized and time-consuming task of applying CREA’s Home Price Index methodology to their sales statistics.\u00a0 The NWT, by contrast, has 20 or so Realtors.\u00a0 So what CREA gets when they take a look at our sales figures is not the Home Price Index at all, it is a good old-fashioned “mean” average,<\/a> which can be very misleading, especially when you have only 26 home sales on which to base your calculation, as we did in October.<\/p>\n

Of the 26 homes that sold in Yellowknife in October, only two were “stick-built” single-family homes, and both were bungalows with no garages.\u00a0 So no matter how fancy your statistical model is, there is no way to use our October 2021 sales data to come up with a credible picture of what a 4 bedroom home with a double garage costs in the NWT.<\/p>\n

But fear not, we have a solution to this problem.\u00a0 We have come up with our own “benchmark” housing types, and we have filtered 2021 sales data (to date) to develop as clear as possible a picture of what you are likely to have to pay for these types of homes.\u00a0 \u00a0Our method might lead statisticians to break out in a cold sweat, but we think it has its merits, and we’ll do our best to be transparent about our methodology (feedback would be very much appreciated).<\/p>\n

We’ll be updating this post in two months time, once 2021 is fully in the books, but for now, here is what the picture looks like.<\/p>\n

3-Bedroom “Stick Built” Home: $687,643<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a>Criteria:<\/p>\n