Top-dollar homes boost real estate figures
A boom in bigger dollar home sales as well as higher priced condos kept Medicine Hat’s real estate market moving upwards in April.
Figures for the month, released Monday, show that while sales volumes increased, the biggest bump came in higher values of residential properties.
Receipts over all sectors totalled $40.4 million, up 12 per cent over April 2016, but the recent month’s total is almost entirely made up of residential units.
Factoring out commercial and other sales, the gain for only homes and condos widens to a full one-third increase.
A total of 89 detached homes sold in the period for a total of $28.6 million — three units and $5 million above last April, and the best numbers in three years.
That included 12 homes selling over the $500,000 mark, including two in the low$700,000 range and two others below $900,000.
The move was enough to drive the year-to-date average selling price up 7 per cent to $308,600.
Pace was also set among sales of other residential units, such as condos, townhouses and mobile homes.
Sales during April totalled 44 — the most for the month in five years — and fetched a combined value of $9.92 million.
It marked only the third time the category has tickled the $10-million mark in any month since 2011.
The highest total in the category was in May 2014, when $10.17 million changed hands for 48 properties, equating to an average unit price of $212,000.
The average unit price last month however, was $225,400, and for the year, $216,300.
Five smaller non-residential sales, including farms, commercial and multifamily properties, totalled $1.46 million.
The total for the same categories one year ago was $6.8 million when five businesses changed hands.
During the recent month, five newly built homes sold on the MLS system, bringing the 2017 total to 11.