Real estate experts say the chill is coming off the housing market in Calgary in part because of foreign buyers.
Realtors in our city are getting busy again, and the higher-end market is one of the busiest. Elbow Valley in the city’s southwest hasn’t seen a home sell for over $2 million since 2014, until now.
“In the last three to four weeks, we have seen the levels of activity that we haven’t seen since 2008, with our team, we’ve sold one home every two days in the last four weeks,’ said Rachelle Starnes, Real Estate Agent, who attributes the uptick to growing confidence in the economy. “We’ve bottomed out and we are ready to get back up on the cycle again and there has been renewed optimism with Keystone pipeline going through and all the different changes that the Trump administration has been doing.”
The Calgary Real Estate Board (CREB) agrees, saying the market is starting to warm up.
“Especially in the detached market, we are seeing conditions return to more balance, so the level of supply and demand are matching each other in this market,” said Ann Marie Lurie, CREB.
One element that makes this recovery different than in the past is a growing interest by foreign investors in our city.
“We are also seeing buyers from Taipai, we are seeing Vietnamese buyers, we are seeing a lot of Iraq and Iranian groups that are coming through our open houses,” said Starnes. “I think that Canada is a safe haven for a lot of these people to invest and to bring up their families.”
Starnes said that about 40 per cent of people showing interest in buying are foreign, but many Calgarians are also house-hunting.
“Strategy-wise, they don’t want to miss the really good pricing that’s out there right now and the sellers are reasonable in their pricing,” she said.
The question that remains is how quickly prices are expected to rise this year, but experts say the signs are promising.
