calgary real estate board
The Calgary Real Estate Board is a voluntary membership-fee based organization. Their primary function is the maintenance of the MLS (Multiple Listing Service). The MLS is an important tool used in the buying and selling of real estate.
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. One of the earlier Presidents, Mr. Clair J. Cote, Sr. was elected as chairman and Lyle as secretary. The board also put together 5 committee members to rewrite the organization’s constitution. The Board at that time charged a fee of to active members and to associates.
In addition to the MLS, The Calgary Real Estate Board provides the public with information on buying and selling their property. They accomplish this mainly through their free 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. This wide coverage allows the seller greater exposure and the buyers more choices, conveniently located in one state-of-the-art system. By representing more than 260 member offices, the Calgary Real Estate Board is able to quickly put buyers and sellers together.
The Calgary Real Estate Board also keeps an eye on trends and related economic concerns for its members. Recently, the Calgary Real Estate Board forecasts that prices for single family homes would see a drop this year as price trends have stabilized. The board has indicated that this recent trend will cause a drop of as much as ,000 on an average selling price. 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.