House prices expected to soften
Real estate body forecasts slight dip of less than 1%
Home costs in the Edmonton region are expected to drop this year by about one per cent, but sales will likely show a small increase, the Realtors Association of Edmonton says.
“We’re looking at them staying pretty stable with 2017, which in my opinion means buyers can be confident there’s not going to be big fluctuations. Sellers, too … There’s stability for both sides,” association chairman Darcy Torhjelm said Wednesday.
His group forecasts that the average sale price of a single-family home will decline 0.84 per cent in 2018, or a decrease of about $4,000 from the $437,744 average price in 2017.
Condominium prices, which in 2017 averaged $248,130, are anticipated to go down by 1.9 per cent this year, while the price of duplexes and townhouses will stay essentially flat.
Overall, the group anticipates prices for all types of residential real estate will be 0.87 per cent lower.
However, it predicts the total number of residential sales will increase by just under one per cent from the 16,441 transactions recorded in 2017.
While the reduction in Edmonton’s unemployment rate and other signs of economic improvement will boost the real estate market, the process takes time, Torhjelm said.
“The future looks pretty bright even beyond 2018 … I think we’re going to see things continually grow. I don’t think we’re going to see the spikes we did a few years ago.”
A report released Wednesday by Royal LePage indicated the average price of an Edmonton home rose by 2.3 per cent, to $386,532, between the final quarter of 2016 and the same period last fall.
The company’s survey of housing prices in the last three months of 2017 showed the median price of a two-storey home was up two per cent, to $443,553, compared to the same period a year earlier, while bungalows increased by 2.4 per cent to $374,412.
At the same time, the median price of a condominium increased by 3.5 per cent to $245,804.
Nationally, Canadian home prices increased 10.8 per cent yearover-year, to $626,042, pushed up mainly by strong markets in British Columbia and Ontario, the report showed.