Redfin To Launch In Two Of Canada’s Highest-Priced Cities This Quarter

Despite signs of a slowdown, Redfin announced today that it will expand its North American footprint by opening up a presence in Toronto and Vancouver, two of Canada’s highest-priced real estate markets. They plan to begin operations by March 2019 with more expansion throughout Canada expected to come.

“Our website and mobile apps will show all the homes for sale via the local Multiple Listing Services used by brokerages. And Redfin will show sale prices for Toronto and Vancouver homes that for years had been unavailable to consumers,” said Redfin CEO Glen Kelman in a statement. 

According to the statement, Redfin will provide to its clients pricing and staging advice, free professional photography, a 3D walkthrough of the home, open houses, yard signs, and marketing materials, and Redfin listings will receive premier placement on Redfin.ca and be displayed on Realtor.ca and other Canadian real estate websites. 

Redfin is the online search site and brokerage that offers a commission discount and 1% listing fee for customers who use Redfin agents for either side of a real estate transaction. Redfin agents are salary-based employees and don’t follow the traditional real estate commission model (though they do receive bonuses, based in part on customer satisfaction).

Vancouver is the highest-priced housing market in Canada with an average benchmark price hovering just above $1 million CAD ($750,000 USD), according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. The commonly used metric of “average benchmark price” in the Canadian market is not an average price, but is what the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver uses to measure the “typical property” in the market, accounting for bedrooms, lot size and other factors. 

The market has started to see some declines in the latter half of 2018, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. This is in part due to stricter mortgage lending rules that were put in place and an increase in inventory on the market, according to CREA. Home prices overall decreased by 0.6% in 2018, compared to 2017, though not every micro market within Vancouver saw a decline. The city of Richmond, for example, saw a 2.8% increase in prices. Price decline accelerated more recently, with the city’s greatest monthly decline in a decade taking place between November and December of 2018 with overall prices decreasing by 1.9%. 

The Toronto market is also one of the highest-priced markets in Canada, with home prices for 2018 at approximately $787,000 CAD ($600,000 USD). There has been a noticeable downward trend in both activity and inventory, according to CREA. There were 16.1% fewer sales in 2018 compared to 2017 and the total number of listings added to the multiple listing service in 2018 was 12.7% lower than 2017. Sales prices for 2018 were 4.3% lower in 2018 than 2017. 

For now Redfin.ca is just a landing page but you can sign up for ongoing news about its launch or apply to work as one of their agents from the page.

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This post first appeared on Forbes.com. To see the original, click here.