While lower Months of Inventory will lead to more balanced markets and stabilized pricing, we have noticed that the properties being sold have had an increased average price of 4% in Alberta to $375,649 from $361,131 in January 2019. Since the current Months of Inventory, and the number of sales in January do not support a market where we would see significant movement in price, it is primarily due to movement in the higher price ranges that is having this effect on pricing. The 6.3% increase in the average price for sales in Edmonton, and a 4.8% increase in the average price for sales in Red Deer had a big part in that jump upwards for the Province.

 

 

The activity that we are seeing is closer to normal for the ten year averages, but is still a bit lower than average.  It appears that people are adjusting expectations to the "new normal", and confidence is continuing to return to the markets. Since Alberta's economy continues to outperform most of Canada for weekly earnings and opportunity, we are seeing the net migration into the Province continuing to increase. This has resulted in the rental markets continue to tighten, which will end up driving buyers and investors into the markets as well as help our move up markets as the first time buyers enter the market. We are also watching the unemployment rate which was seeing a drop through the Fall months of 2019, but has since started rising again in December and January.  There appears to be a lag of six months in the Real Estate markets to the employment markets, so we will continue to monitor the migration and employment trends.

 

All of this said, we are very happy with the results in January 2020. While the Province had an increase in sales of 4%, CIR Realty experienced an increase in sales of 15.6%!  Our agents continue to focus on educating clients on making good decisions to help them achieve their goals in Real Estate.