Once again,
I'm here to bring you the latest news and trends in the Calgary real estate
market for September, 2021.
I'd like to start by giving you some context through a few articles.
I've been reading recently that you'll find very interesting.
Calgary is among one of the most affordable markets in Canada for millennials!
More millennials in the 30 to 39 age group are carrying mortgages in Calgary
compared to the national average,
making it one of the most millennial-friendly housing markets in Canada.
There is a high degree of affordability in Alberta market,
which translates into relatively high rates of a millennial home ownership when
compared to Vancouver and Toronto,
which had the lowest figure of 30 to 39 year olds who held mortgages at only
24%. Calgary was the most affordable for gen X-ers that's age 40 to
49 with 54% holding a mortgage since affordability is a
crucial driver in homeownership.
You can see why it's so attractive to one of Canada's youngest city populations.
The second article is talking about the Canadian housing market and it facing a
lower risk of overheating by RBC.
The frantic pace of sales is starting to slow down across the country after
reaching sky high levels. At the start of the year,
the Canadian housing market has slowed since spring Calgary continues to be the
most affordable, the markets of the big four cities.
According to this report,
the market has recovered solidly and in the past year - existing and newly built
homes, inventories are no longer excessive and prices are rising moderately.
A startling $10 billion turnaround in Alberta's deficit.
And the economy is growing more rapidly than expected,
which is forecasted to expand about 6.7%.
Overall employment is anticipated to increase by 5.2% while the jobless
rate is falling faster than expected.
Currently housing starts are surging and with higher oil prices,
an 8% bump in oil sands production, along with stronger natural gas markets,
the total non-renewable resource revenues are projected to hit almost
$10 billion this fiscal year.
That easily eclipses the subpar performance of 2.9 billion forecasts
in February's budget and in marks the highest natural resource payday in
Alberta's history within the last 10 years and higher commodity prices and a
stronger than expected economic recovery are driving the provinces,
improving financial fortunes.
Several other bright spots have emerged such as rising consumer spending,
higher non-energy investment levels and increased manufacturing
shipments. Yet the recovery still has a ways to go as Alberta.
Isn't back to pre pandemic employment levels and some sectors such as
tourism and hospitality face profound challenges.
Higher oil prices and expected GDP growth or welcome changes after
last year's deep recession.
Now that I've caught you up on the current events - let's into answering the age
old question of how's the real estate market doing?
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And one of our team will get back to you soon. All right,
let's talk about sales volume. Sales in August was a total of
2,151 homes.
And that's 37% higher than the same time last year,
which is also 25% higher than long-term trends.
Sales have slowed down from the record setting pace from earlier in the year,
but on a year to date basis,
the eight month total of 19,516 sales is higher than
annual sales recorded over the past six years.
Sales have far exceeded expectations throughout the most of the pandemic driven
mostly by demand for detached homes. Sales in the detached market,
total 1,300 units, which was 31% higher than the same time last year.
Taking a look at this table,
you can tell that sales and virtually every price bracket is being outperformed
this year versus August,
2020 and a bulk of the sales are happening under the $600,000 mark.
Inventory. At the start of August,
we had 6,680 homes on the market. And when we finished the month,
it was reduced to 6,053.
That is a significant decline in inventory.
And currently we have 7% less inventory than we did last year.
And looking at new listings,
we listed 10% more homes in the same time last year,
which is a total of 2800 and August,
despite that we still saw a steep decrease of 600 homes due to the continued
pace of sales.
And we also need to factor a seasonality with some homeowners that aren't
triggering sales on their homes, taking their homes off the market.
Each property type did perform differently with detached homes,
seeing a 14% less inventory, semi-detached had 10% less,
row and townhomes reported a 5% decrease in apartments saw the
only increase in inventory of 7% and let's roll right into pricing.
Here's the breakdown for each property type.
Detached saw a 10.6% increase in price,
Semi-detached homes. At 9.9%.
Row and townhomes had an 8% gain and
apartments saw a modest uptake of 2.3%.
Check out this graph, which shows how each district in the city performed.
They all saw consistent adjustments upwards with the lowest performing district
being city centre.
And this is largely due to the higher concentration of apartments.
If you're a buyer you be asking, what kind of deal can I expect?
This is a hard question to answer because each property type district,
community are all performing slightly differently.
If we were to take a look at overall sales price to list price ratio across the
board, we saw that buyers were closing about 97.8% to list price,
which is pretty consistent with last month.
Here's what's interesting in the detached market,
August prices remain relatively stable compared to July,
and that's 10% higher than the same time last year price gains were depending on
the location of the properties and prices are trending down in the city centre,
Northwest and south districts compared to last month. In summary,
we can really take a look at two statistics to help us wrap up.
First one is sales to new listing ratio.
And this stat helps us to understand the pace of sales versus the new listings
hitting the market. If the ratio is one-to-one or a hundred percent,
that means we're selling as much as we're listing and across all property types
this ratio was 76%.
So for every four new listings, three of the homes were being sold.
What's even more important about this stat is how it is performing year over
year. With detached, we saw a 15% increase in this ratio.
Semi-detached has 7% gain in this ratio.
Row and town homes report a significant increase of 23%.
And the apartment sector saw a nice 13% increase as well.
The second stat that we can look at is months of supply.
This helps us to determine what type of market we are in.
At this month sales price,
how many months would it take to sell all the active inventory?
So for detached homes, we're slightly in the sellers market at 2.13 months,
semi-detached is approximately three months, which puts us at a balanced market.
Row and Townhomes is at 2.8 months,
which is also in a balanced market and apartments remain in the buyers market at
5.38 months.
Interesting enough,
when we look at the detached market from months to supply is just above two
months in August, which is well below traditional levels for this time of year,
this indicates that the detached market is not as tight as levels earlier in the
year. Well, that wraps up another Calgary real estate market update.
Thanks for joining me.
And if you're a buyer seller or investor who needs a little bit more guidance
and a little bit more advice on your specific situation,
please feel free to reach out to us in the comments section below, or drop us an
email@helloatliveinnercity.com as always.
It's our pleasure to bring you this every single month,
which is why we really value your continued support. So keep those like,
shares and subs coming.
My name is Jasben Lai with the LiveInnerCity real estate team where we help you
keep real estate simple. We'll see you next time.