Alberta – Affordability Is Restored

The affordability in Alberta has restored itself, and the market is filled with multiple offers.  Over the past couple weeks, we have been involved with a number of multiple offers.  Right now is a great time to be selling your home.  We listed 6 places just over 1 week ago and 3 of them are now conditionally sold.  If you are selling your home, you need to be priced well and show well.  These are the biggest factors in making a quick and profitable sale in this marketplace.

Here is what RBC had to say about the Alberta and Calgary market.  Here you can see the Full Report.

Alberta — Affordability Restored

Declining mortgage rates and sinking home prices throughout 2008 and early 2009 worked their magic towards restoring homeownership affordability in Alberta. Following record quarterly declines in the first quarter of this year – ranging from 3.3 to 6.1 percentage points – RBC’s affordability measures for the province were broadly back to their long-term averages.  This has sparked renewed interest from buyers, who have made a welcome return to the market recently.  Sales of existing homes have rebounded smartly this spring from their lowest point at the turn of the year since 1996.  Market conditions have tightened as a result of the effect of
stronger buying interest and more restraint on the part of sellers.  With less supply hitting the market — housing starts have been at a 14-year low since the start of this year — and an economic backdrop that is expected to show increasing signs of recovery, Alberta’s housing market is likely at the point of turning the corner.

Calgary — Recovery in the Making

Calgary is another battleground of the housing downturn that is showing signs of turning the corner.  While its economic backdrop, too, remains tenuous – Calgary’s unemployment rate surged to a 12-year high this spring – the market is benefitting from a huge drop in the cost of homeownership since the middle of 2007.  The combination of lower mortgage rates and home prices has driven down RBC’s affordability measures for the city by 7.6 (condominiums) to 11.9 percentage points (two-storey homes) in the last year alone (ended in the first quarter), which brought levels below long-term averages for most housing types.  Greater affordability contributed to a sharp upswing in sales of existing homes during the spring after collapsing to 14-year lows earlier in the winter.  Although encouraging, renewed activity is still shy of where it was before the housing boom began and has yet to stem the decline in prices.  However, the recent sharp rise in the sales-to-new listings ratio suggests that such a development might not be very far off into the future.