Compare and shortlist

A defensible ranking of your top homes, on total cost and fit rather than on which one you saw last.

The idea

The last house always wins. This is the single most reliable bias in home buying. Whichever home you saw most recently feels the best, because it's the one you can still see clearly. The one from three weeks ago has faded into a general impression and a couple of details. Your memory is not ranking these homes on merit; it's ranking them on recency and on how you happened to feel that afternoon.

The defence is simple and it's already done: scores written on the day, compared side by side, on paper. That's this week.

Total monthly cost, per home. Price is a headline. The number that determines whether you enjoy living somewhere is what leaves your account every month, and it's built from six things: principal and interest, property tax, condo fee if there is one, home insurance, utilities, and a maintenance reserve.

Run that math across a shortlist and the ranking often reorders itself. A condo that's forty thousand cheaper with a $560 fee can cost more every month than a half-duplex with none. An older detached home with a low price and a 1978 furnace has a cost profile that a spreadsheet built on list price will never show you.

The maintenance reserve is the line everyone omits. Houses consume money — roofs, furnaces, hot water tanks, windows, fences, appliances. It isn't optional spending, it's deferred spending, and the fact that it arrives unpredictably doesn't make it unreal. The common approach is to set aside a percentage of the home's value each year, which for most homes works out to a few hundred dollars a month.

Include it. It's the difference between a budget that survives year three and one that doesn't. And it's what makes a fair comparison against a condo possible, because a condo fee is partly a forced version of exactly this — the building is doing the saving on your behalf, whether you'd have done it or not.

What you can and can't change. Worth repeating in front of a shortlist, because this is the moment it applies. The kitchen can change. The flooring can change. The layout can sometimes change, expensively. The lot, the location, and the price you paid cannot change, ever. If one home wins on finishes and another wins on lot and street, the second one is usually the better buy — the first is selling you something you could have bought later.

Five years out. Pull up what you wrote in Week 4 about future plans and read it against the shortlist. This is where a home that's perfect today and impossible in three years gets caught.

When the numbers and your gut disagree. They will, on at least one home. This isn't a malfunction. Sometimes the scorecard is catching a bias — the well-staged house, the one you saw on a sunny day. Sometimes your gut is catching something real that no row on a table captures: a street that feels wrong, a layout that doesn't work for how you live. The point isn't for the table to overrule you. It's for the disagreement to be visible, so you can ask which one is right rather than never noticing there was a conflict.

Edmonton specifics

Property tax varies more than you'd expect between comparable homes, because it follows assessed value rather than what you paid. Two similar houses in different neighbourhoods can differ by a meaningful amount every month. Where a property's assessment is available it's filled into your scorecard automatically, from the City's own Property Assessment Data (Current Calendar Year) release.

Two things to hold in mind about that number. It is the City's assessed value for a stated year — not a market appraisal, and not what the home is worth today. The City publishes it "for property assessment interpretation purposes only" and does not warrant its completeness or accuracy. And the current release runs a year behind, so on a home that has just been renovated or newly built it can be well out. Use it to compare the tax load between two houses, which is what it is good for. Don't use it to argue about price.

Condo fee inclusions vary wildly building to building, so never compare two fees without comparing what they cover. Pull the actual inclusions into the scorecard — heat, water, electricity, insurance on the building, reserve fund contribution, amenities, parking — and compare like with like. A high fee that covers heat and water in an Edmonton winter can be the cheaper home.

A worked example, using current Edmonton medians. The tools page runs a live comparison between a median condo and a median detached home at today's feed prices — full monthly cost, both columns, maintenance reserve included. The gap is usually smaller than people assume in one direction and larger in the other.

Remember that the monthly figure on every listing card is principal and interest only at 10% down, 4.34% fixed, 25-year amortization, principal and interest only. This week is where that number gets completed, per home, for the three to five homes it actually matters for.

The worksheet

The property scorecard. Up to five homes, side by side. Most of it is already filled in from your Week 6 checklists — you're reviewing, not typing.

Cost rows (mostly automatic): address · list price · estimated principal and interest · property tax per month · condo fee per month · insurance per month · utilities per month · maintenance reserve per month · total monthly cost · and a plain verdict against your comfort ceiling from Week 2 — comfortable, tight, or over.

Fit rows (from your showings): needs met, as a count against your own Week 4 list · showing score · condition · layout · location · five-year fit.

Then two rankings: - A weighted total, calculated using the needs ranking you set in Week 4 — so a home that meets your top-ranked need scores more than one that meets your fifth. - rank — your own order, by instinct. Drag them into the order you'd actually choose.

Where they disagree, the scorecard says so, names the home and the rows driving the gap, and asks one question: is the table missing something, or are you?

That's the entire exercise. Not to hand the decision to a spreadsheet, but to make sure you notice when you're about to override one.

If you're buying with someone, rank separately and compare. It takes ten minutes and it prevents the version of this conversation that happens at 9pm on offer night.

What this unlocks

A one-page comparison you can print and put in front of a partner, a parent, or your agent — which is a considerably better conversation than "I think I liked the second one?"

Your top-ranked home carries into Week 8, where the offer worksheet prefills from it, including the real total monthly cost rather than the listing card estimate.

The information in this course is general education, not financial, mortgage, legal, tax, insurance or real estate advice. Rules, costs and eligibility change and vary by situation. Talk to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.