Inventory Rising....and desperation begining

What do you make out of a Realtor press release that begins like this:
"Pessimistic market watchers are peering into the future for any sign of a market slowdown in Edmonton. According to the REALTORS® Association of Edmonton the market remains buoyant with a billion dollars worth of residential sales in May."

So is this the denial stage. Already? And going by the tenor of comments and the ad hominem attacks, it is looking like that. But I'll try to be very rational here. And look at the numbers and fundamentals. And may be an occasional shot at humor.

Let's look at the numbers. First Edmonton.
Inventory seems to have increased quite a bit. We are now close to 5000 on MLS alone. The Sales to listings has fallen to 59%. And the rule of thumb is that anywhere between in 40 to 60% is now a neutral market.
On comfree, there are over 1600 properties listed. And it looks like things are not moving at all in the comfree world.
Just to put things into perspective, last May there were only 1847 properties listed on MLS while comfree had 774.

Now to Calgary. There was quite a bit of stuff added onto the market last month. There are now around 6400 properties on sale on MLS alone. Add around 2000 from comfree and WeList and we have some choice. The Sales were actually down by 2% from last May. The sales to listings ratio is now below 60%, making Calgary a neutral buyer.
So are we at an inflexion point? May be. But you can never underestimate the 'buying power' of masses in a mania.
I'll further crunch these numbers in coming days.

p.s. Texas population increased by 12.7% between 2000 and 2006.
Alberta population increased by 10.6% between 2001 and 2006.
So you see, Texas should have seen even bigger boom than Alberta. Yeah, it's another failed attempt at humor from my side.

Update: As usual, the MSM cheerleaders are out in full swing. Obviously, they will be the last ones to see the import of rise in inventory and how things are sitting for much longer. I wonder why does anyone complain about the existence of this blog when all that anyone sees out there is roads to riches and the housing boom that will take the prices to infinity.