While many more million-dollar homes were sold in the City of Calgary in 2017, experts say it may not mean that the housing market has turned itself around just yet.
According to the Calgary Real Estate Board, the sales of top-tier homes are up by approximately eight percent compared to 2016.
However, the same report says sales of the very, very expensive homes in Calgary, those with price tags between $2M and $4M, are down 13 percent from 2016.
Economists say that increased sales in the top-tier don’t tell anyone very much about what is going on in the housing market.
“That is much more of a niche market, particularly in Calgary. It’s not that we have a huge amount of supply in that million plus segment,” says Ann Marie Lurie with the Calgary Real Estate Board.
Lurie says that anyone looking to buy right now should pay close attention to what they can really afford.
“I would say to try and apply some sort of generalization just based off one segment of the market is really never good practice to do that. You want to look at more on what you are specifically dealing with.”
She says that a better picture of housing in Calgary will come later this month, when CREB releases its 2018 report.
“We're not fully back to where we were. So the impact on the housing market will be seen a lot more coming in forecast in the end of the month but it’s those employment numbers and migration, I have seen a turn and I started to see it happen really at the end of last year,” Lurie says.
CREB will release its full housing forecast later in January.
(With files from Stephanie Wiebe)
