Happy New Year for the housing market? Expect another pandemic-fuelled seller’s market in 2022
Double-digit price gains, investors, condos and suburbs expected to remain hot housing trends in 2022, experts say.
Calgary continues to report high market performance in spite of the traditionally slow winter market
Calgary is currently among the most affordable of the major cities in Canada for real estate, which is particularly attractive given the out-of-control prices being seen in other major markets. According to a recent report, homes in Calgary are actually deeply undervalued. However, according to local realtor Jesse Davies, growth potential in the market means there is still a lot to look forward to.
According to the Calgary Real Estate Board’s (CREB) new statistics release for the month of November, the average price of a detached home in the city was $542,600, up over 10% year over year. Semi-detached homes averaged $429,800 and apartments averaged just $251,700 with the lowest year-over-year increase. In addition, despite winter being seen as a traditionally slow season for the city, according to CREB sales have remained strong at “roughly the same levels seen since August” while inventories continue to fall.
Calgary’s strong 2021 real estate market expected to continue in 2022
Calgary’s real estate market has experienced a banner year in 2021 so far, and the good times are likely to keep rolling in 2022, a new report suggests.
PwC released its 2022 Canadian real estate forecast this fall, including for Calgary, noting the city is experiencing newfound optimism about its economy and, in turn, real estate.
House prices in Canada will rise higher in 2022, real-estate report says
Housing prices in Canada are expected to increase steadily in 2022, with inter-provincial migration continuing in many regions and a short supply of homes in those areas pushing up costs, according to Re/Max’s housing market outlook report published Wednesday.
Sale prices are projected to go up by 9.2 per cent on average across the country next year, the real-estate company estimates. It would follow an already “sensational” year in terms of sales and price appreciation, Re/Max’s president says.
“In the history of our nation, I don’t know of, certainly not in my tenure, of more than 95% of markets being in seller’s market territory,” he told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview. “So it can’t be overstated enough how strong the market was in Canada in 2021.”
Five Ontario cities with the lowest and highest property tax rates revealed
The five Ontario cities with the lowest and highest property tax rates in the province have been revealed.
A newly-released report from Zoocasa, a real estate agency that offers market analysis, analyzed the property tax rates for 35 Ontario municipalities in 2021.
Zoocasa’s report said there is a “significant variance” in the annual property tax rates paid by homeowners in Ontario depending on where they live.
Alberta creates close to 20,000 jobs in August, following national growth rate
Statistics Canada numbers released Friday shows employment in the province rose by 19,500 jobs compared to July when accounting for seasonal adjustments, resulting in a 0.9 per cent growth rate. The majority of new jobs came in the form of full-time work with 16,300 jobs. Part-time work rose by 3,100 new positions.
Alberta’s unemployment rate dropped 0.6 percentage points from July, down to 7.9 per cent. The number of people who are unemployed but actively looking for work dropped to 193,400 from 208,400 last month.
Moving to a small town for cheaper housing? Prepare to pay more to get around, for insurance and repairs
After spending the pandemic living and working in a 550-square-foot apartment in Toronto’s Junction Triangle, Ian Cable and his girlfriend Amy Stewart began searching the neighbourhood for more living space.
“We just looked at what it would take to buy a house, and it would have been within our means, but very, very stretched,” Mr. Cable says. “We would have been house-poor.”
Instead, the couple – who are both in their early 40s – moved two-and-a-half hours north to Ms. Stewart’s hometown of Owen Sound, settling into a modestly-sized three bedroom home on a one-acre lot. While the house cost a fraction of a similar property in Toronto, Mr. Cable says they’ve run into a few costs they hadn’t expected.
Since the pandemic struck, thousands of Canadians have left big cities in search of more room and affordable real estate. But moving to rural areas comes with unanticipated changes in living expenses, such as higher transportation costs, repairs and insurance
Condos are back to being a seller’s market as sales, rentals rise, says Toronto real estate board
Toronto area condo rentals and sales have seen “a dramatic resurgence” from the pandemic in which condo sales initially slumped and tenants fled their apartments leaving landlords to struggle to fill the vacancies, reports the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB).
Citing the return of a seller’s market, the board said condo sales climbed 10.3 per cent in the last quarter, compared to the same period last year. Listings plummeted 31 per cent, however, pushing the average selling price up about 9 per cent to $689,831.
Canadian Real Estate Sees Another Leading Indicator Crash Over 20% From Peak
The Canadian real estate slowdown is getting started, as another leading indicator fades. Statistics Canada (Stat Can) data shows building permit values fell in August. Since permits are for future activity, a decline means less building is coming. All the declines were due to a drop in residential permits, which has fallen sharply from its peak. While the drop is sharp, there’s no need to worry about supply concerns yet. Even at this reduced volume, the value of permits still exceeds pre-pandemic levels.
Canada has four of the 10 most affordable and four of the least affordable cities in North America
Vancouver has been a presence on various lists of least-affordable housing for years, and now tops a survey released this month by Oxford Economics considering North America’s most expensive cities.
The group’s Housing Affordability Indices report concludes that “affordability deteriorated in nearly all U.S. and Canadian metros” in the second quarter of 2021. A typical Canadian house price hit 35 per cent above the borrowing capacity of median-income households, and in fact, results show a “more rapidly worsening affordability in Canada than in the U.S.,” Oxford says.
