The Calgary Real Estate calls it a bumpy road to recovery, and that was certainly evident in looking at what happened last month in our city.

February 2018 Stats

Sales of residential  properties dropped in February by 18% over 2017.  That’s a huge dip from last year.  But thankfully, we didn’t see an equally drastic decline in home prices.  We were fortunate in that we didn’t get the usual number of new listings last month which helped to keep prices on an even keel.   The current supply of homes for sale in Calgary sits at about four months.  Days on the market is another step back, at least from this time last year.  It’s gone from an average of 48 days to...

While drilling down into some of the new statistics that the Calgary Real Estate Board recently released, we discovered something very interesting.   The district of Calgary West  which is loosely defined as everything west of Crowchild Trail, north of Glenmore Trail/Highway 8 and south of the river or Trans-Canada Highway, is one of the city’s most stable market areas. That’s in all housing types, from single-family to attached, town homes and condos.  Calgary West showed the strongest annual growth in 2017 with only City Centre to look up to.

The Proof is in the Numbers

As the following chart will show, the communities in Calgary West survived the recent downturn as the best for single-family homes and was the runner-up for apartment...

We think it’s going to be a fairly decent year for real estate in Calgary.

This morning was the annual Calgary Real Estate Board’s Forecast Breakfast and whether the market is up, down or sideways we always come away with renewed vigor and optimism about how the year is going to go.   And today’s event was no excpetion.

CREB always likes to be cautiously optimistic and has announced that 2018 will offer its share of challenges.  The road to economic recovery continues to be bumpy – nothing is happening overnight – but there’s every indication that we can safely adopt an optimistic attitude.

The Short Term

Over coffee and dainties this morning, we...

It’s a fresh New Year, full of promise and optimism especially when it comes to Calgary Real Estate.  What will happen with house prices?  Will condo prices ever pick up after a 10-year slump?  And, now that I’ve waited for the recession to end, should I sell this year?

As I write this, we’ve all just learned that Amazon  has chosen not to relocate a facility for its HQ2 in Calgary.  We didn’t even make the short list of 20 different cities (like Toronto did).  I read a few predictions about 2018 from various Calgarians at the end of December that declared that Amazon and the reported 50,000 new jobs that would come with it would boost our real estate market.  So, nothing to do now but go onward....

When more mortgage rules were announced for uninsured mortgages last month, I thought it might precipitate a spike in real estate sales in Calgary.  People just don’t want to pay higher interest rates, and with the threat of new buyers being forced into homes in a lower price bracket, and in a neighbourhood they didn’t want to live in, people reacted.

The November 2017 stats were released on Dec 1 by the Calgary Real Estate Board (CREB) showing that sales are up 15% over November 2016 - proving my point.  Real estate sales were up to 1,411 units, with improvement in numbers across the board.  The majority though were in homes priced under half a million dollars.

Why Sales Are Moving

CREB Chief...

Last month’s Calgary real estate statistics show the market in our city is in maintenance-mode.  No worse and no better when you look at Calgary as a whole.  A little worse in some areas and a little better in some.

The Good News

Starting on a positive note, October was a good month if you are selling a semi-detached home.  Duplexes or “paired homes” as some marketers are starting to call them, have seen the best improvement this year in terms of price gains.  The average price for a semi-detached home was $419,400 which is 3% more than 2016 levels.  Demand is up across the city for semi-detached.  It’s the only product that has experienced sales volumes...

Another round of mortgage tightening is coming, meaning, more people looking for Calgary homes for sale will be forced to by less house.

It was just announced that the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) will be implementing more stringent guidelines and implementing yet another stress test to make sure new home buyers have enough capacity to replay their mortgages.

This follows on the heels of last year’s new mortgage rules which were also implemented to make sure new home buyers can deal with possible increases in interest rates when renewal time comes.  It reduced the purchasing power of many people in Calgary looking for their first home.

When they come into effect

The ...

We just got the stats for September 2017 and sales slipped a little in Calgary real estate last month.  The good news is that we had some good numbers in the first six months of 2017 and this activity managed to boost our year-to-date average up by 7% over 2016.  It’s still 11% under those long-term averages, and I agree with the Calgary Real Estate Board's take on the market – with more listings coming in and sales slowing in this last quarter of the year, we’re going to have to work hard to maintain our optimism!

There was a bump in inventory last month – we were up by 6,861 units – with attached properties and apartment condos setting a record for the highest inventory ever.  That means, from a buyer’s...

Fall forecast is for moderate sales and stabilizing prices

I wouldn’t say that million-dollar-plus home buyers are lining up to snap up some premiere Calgary real estate listings, but they’re certainly expressing some sincere interest.

A forecast by one of Canada’s luxury real estate firms has issued some promising statistics though.  Over the summer, there were 112 luxury homes featured in Calgary real estate listings for over $1 million that sold to some pretty special buyers.  Single-family home sales in this sector and some fairly opulent attached home sales (think Altadore or West Hillhurst) seem to be stabilizing...