The pace of transactions involving these buyers noticeably accelerated in recent months
The Calgary housing market is seeing a major activity boost from inter-provincial buyers who have shifted towards Alberta as a cheaper remote-work or investment option, industry players said.
“We see Ontarians who can work from home and still want a fairly large city and like being close to the mountains (who say), ‘I’m going to move to Calgary but still keep my old job, and prices are half, because why not?’” Dan Eisner of True North Mortgage told the Financial Post.
“Then of course, we also see that oil prices recovered substantially and as much as we Calgarians want to expand our industries, oil is still a really, really big mover here.”
The pace of transactions by buyers from other parts of the country noticeably accelerated in recent months, according to Jared Chamberlain of the Chamberlain Group.
“Mid-January 2022, we felt the change happen quickly. We saw 10 to 15 out-of-town inquiries a day at that point to our team,” Chamberlain said. “It did catch us off-guard. We did see other buyers in 2021 do the same, but the floodgates opened once the clock turned over to 2022.”
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The Calgary Real Estate Board said that the market’s detached-home segment has had less than a month of supply since December. This pushed the benchmark price for detached properties to rise to $620,500 in March, more than $73,000 higher than December levels and 20% higher on an annual basis.
At least 57% of Calgary’s available supply was valued higher than $600,000 as of March, the CREB added.
“Conditions have not been this tight since 2006, which was also the last time that we saw price gains push above 15%,” the CREB said.
“It’s definitely in a seller’s market when you look at sales-to-listing ratios and things of that nature,” said Michael Waters, CEO of Minto Group. “So, Calgary – depending on how you look at it – has benefited or been part of the same kind of Canada-wide phenomenon in terms of dwindling inventories of homes to purchase.”
