Real estate profession markets in Canada
The Calgary Real Estate Board is a non-profit, voluntary membership organization with more than 5,500 licensed brokers and associates. A non-profit organization formed to serve the more than five thousand real estate professions in Canada is the Calgary Real Estate Board. The Calgary Real Estate Board is a voluntary membership-fee based organization. The goal of the Board is to provide assistance, including the MLS (Multi-List Service) to their members and clients. The MLS allows members immediate access to all the latest information on available properties.
The Calgary Real Estate Board was originally conceived in the 1920s, and registered under the Statutes of Alberta on March 20, 1929. The organization was relatively inactive until 1943, when Mr. Kennett Lyle a real estate professional took an interest in revitalizing the board to help serve the needs of the real estate professionals. At that present time, there were no other professional groups for real estate agents. At the first reorganization meeting, Mr. Clair J. Cote, Sr. was elected chairman and Kennett Lyle became secretary. The board also put together 5 committee members to rewrite the organization’s constitution. The Board at that time charged a fee of $5 to active members and $2 to associates.
Although the MLS is their primary mission, the Calgary Real Estate Board also serves to provide the public and agents with up to date info on buying and selling real estate. One venue they use is their weekly publication, Real Estate News. This magazine combined with their monthly ‘Home to Home’ publication provides the general public with an extensive overview of the real estate market along with many in-depth and educational articles.
The Calgary Real Estate Board lists on their MLS more than 90% of the properties available in the Calgary and surrounding areas. The nature of this advanced technology gives the sellers more potential buyers and the buyers more options in property selection and price. By representing more than 260 member offices, the Calgary Real Estate Board is able to quickly put buyers and sellers together.
Another mission of the Calgary Real Estate Board is to apprise members of current trends in the real estate market and overall economy. One of these recent trends, as mentioned by The Calgary Real Estate Board, is the potential drop in selling prices for the upcoming year. After realizing rising prices for the last 3 years, it is expected the average sales price for a home in Calgary will drop between $8000 and $9000. This could ignite the market that has remained slightly stagnant the past 6 months. Nevertheless, the Calgary Real Estate Board expects this tend to be short-lived and expects home prices to rise about 10% by the end of 2009.
