Happy new year, everyone. Hopefully, everyone enjoyed their time off.
And once again,
I'm here to bring you the Calgary Real Estate Market Update for January
2021. I'll start with a few news articles.
So I can give you a little bit of background and context on our current economy
and what's going on in Calgary. And then we'll dive into the sales,
inventory and, price and wrap up with advice for buyers and sellers.
Whether you're buying, selling, or investing in real estate --
it's important to understand the market trends so that you can make informed
decisions.
That's why we consistently bring you the most recent and relevant information in
a straightforward manner. So,
subscribe to our channel so that you don't miss our monthly market updates and,
let's get right into it. First. There's this article,
which talks about small businesses currently struggling in Alberta.
We all need to continue to do our part in supporting the local businesses.
we love. As of January 8th.
Alberta's unemployment rate is sitting at about 11%, which is still very high,
but there is good news.
We are now at sixth consecutive months of unemployment gains.
One of the factors that contribute heavily to our higher unemployment rate is
due to the fact that 25% of our province's GDP is
reliant on oil and gas.
And currently on gas is sitting at above $50 and has
stabilized quite a bit in recent months.
Here's another article that talks about Calgary's fees and taxes and
how the city is helping at the moment with the current pandemic situation.
Things like the trans affairs and garbage disposal bin fees are being
frozen to 2020 levels due to the impact of COVID-19
city.
Council has also approved a slight decrease in property taxes for 2021.
So on average, we're going to see the following:
Detached homes are going to see about a 1% decrease.
Condo owners - about 3% decrease in property tax.
Now let's dive right into the statistics and analysis that we've done so
that we can help you understand where the Calgary real estate market is today
and also where we think it's going. Now,
let's start with sales summary or sales volume.
As we have previously predicted the pace of sales from the last half of 2020,
continued through December at an abnormally quicker pace. In fact,
this December was our best month in sales. Since December, 2007,
we finished the month with almost 1200 in total sales in the city of
Calgary,
which was 40% increase over December, 2019.
This puts us at the most improved month in comparison to all
of last year in 2020. In this second graph,
you can see how all month long we were outperforming this time last
year. And as we moved into closer to the holiday season,
that gap actually grew even larger.
Now each property type did act a little bit differently,
and here's the quick breakdown for detached homes.
We saw a 42.5% increase and semi-detached we
saw a 38% increase, whereas apartments,
which were struggling all year long,
had a 39% increase and row townhouses were about
33% increase. So all across the board,
we saw a significant improvement and you might be asking yourself, you know,
did this happen all across the board for all price ranges?
And to give you a quick answer it's yes, check out the chart here,
which shows us each price range and how it compared to last December.
The bold numbers in the far right column represent the percent of increase in
sales in each price range. And this December,
it was all across the board. Now let's talk about inventory/listings.
In December because of seasonality.
It's typical that the number of active listings and new listings will decrease,
and that's what we're seeing today.
But the effect of this is much more profound this year - at the beginning of
December, for example, we had almost 5,000 properties on the market for sale.
That was already 1000 fewer homes available than December, 2019,
which is a pretty low inventory balance. And by the end of December,
we dropped all the way down to just over 3,600 homes on the market.
That's a decrease of almost 1400 homes that makes the gap between
the end of 2020 versus 2019 to about 20.4%
less active listings. As you can see by this graph,
this is the lowest number of inventory we've had since
December, 2013.
This all happened despite the fact that for more than half the month of December
adding new listings at the same pace that we were in 2019.
Towards the end of the month, though,
we were adding much more inventory in terms of new listings as illustrated by
the following graph. So to tie it all together,
our total inventory continue to fall because we had an unseasonable amount of
sales and buyer demand happening. As always different property types,
fared differently. With detached homes,
we saw total active inventory drop down negative
31% from last year with a jump of 80% in new
listings versus last year,
semi-detached saw total active inventory drop-down 39% from last year and had a
slight bump of 1.7% in new listings.
Row town homes had total inventory drop to
33% less than last year.
And they saw a bump of 11% in terms of new listings that hit the market.
It's total inventory continues to be the only one with more on the market.
Then the same time last year.
And we finished the year at 2% more with total inventory and
2% more new listings that hit the market.
Now let's talk about price in December,
it's not uncommon to see prices hit a low point.
This is because when the winter market hits,
it's typical that inventory sales and the pace of the overall market
tends to slow down.
This was not the case this year because of the strong push of sales
and the lower inventory Calgary's benchmark price was held quite steady.
The benchmark sales price for the month of December was about
$422,000.
This equates to a 1.5% increase in price year over
year. And for 2020 as a whole,
we only saw a 0.7% decrease in benchmark price when
compared to 2019,
even with all the uncertainty that's going on in 2020 pricing held
pretty strongly and here are the breakdowns in price for each property segment.
Detached home saw a 3.8% increase year over year.
Apartments saw a year over year decrease of 2%.
Semi-detached saw 1.5% increase year over
year, and then row town homes,
didn't see much of a difference with only about 0.2%
increase in price. In summary,
there are lots of positives going on right now in our Calgary Real Estate
Market, despite the continuing effects of everything that's been going on,
he start the new year with very low inventory and what looks to be a continued
sales strength field by people who fundamentally need to change their housing
situation and are being held by historically low interest rates.
Advice for buyers. As a buyer,
you're probably feeling right now that there is a lack of inventory to choose
from this number won't increase drastically for the next few months.
So if you see that new listing that hits all your check boxes,
you need to act right away and write an offer. Remember,
homes of value will always sell no matter the market.
And what you might find right now is that you might be in a multiple offer or a
backup offer situation. If you want to learn more about these situations,
what they are and how to handle them,
you can check out a video I made here and I'll leave a link in the description
below. Now,
this chart shows us that the trend is that it will take a few months and perhaps
a little bit longer for the numbers to be back into balance and closer to the
buyer's market that we have experienced in the past five years or so.
The sales to list price ratio is about 97%,
which is about 2% higher than we were last year,
which represents a tighter market. Advice for sellers. First of all,
be in tune with your market segment, as they're all behaving quite differently.
For more custom experience,
you can engage one of us by email so we can give you the right advice in order
to sell your property for the maximum impact.
As much as the continued sales volume,
we have been enjoying into the early part of January.
There are definitely still uncertainty with what will happen in the longer term.
One thing that will become even more important is the strategy that you take in
pricing your home,
which we will suggest that you should still price quite fairly from the get-go
since this is not the type of market that you want to try to be greedy.
Another increasingly important thing here is that you need to know
exactly what your Realtor's marketing plan to maximize the exposure for your
home is going to be. Now more than ever,
our team is investing in several different avenues, including video marketing,
to increase the visibility of our listings and helping our clients to achieve
amazing results.
If you want to know more about how we can help you please email us and one of
our team will definitely walk you through our process.
That's it for the Calgary real estate market update for January, 2021,
please like, and share this video. If you benefited from it or you think,
you know, anybody that can benefit from it.
And if you have any questions at all, we would love to engage with you.
Leave those in the comment section below.
My name is Jasben Lai with the LiveInnerCity Real Estate Team,
helping you keep real estate simple. We'll see you in the next one.