While there has been panic surrounding the national housing market in December, there’s been one city that’s been shunning all trends; and it might not surprise you to know it’s Calgary.
Calgary was in fact, the only city in the entire country that saw year over year gains in their market during the month of December 2012. As you can see from the chart below, while the rest of Canada saw only moderate increases in things such as sales and prices, and sometimes even a decline, Calgary continued to outperform once again.
The stats, provided by the Canadian Real Estate Association, break down as such:
- MLS sales for the city of Calgary were up 7.2 per cent to 1,343 in December. The national average on the other hand, saw a significant drop of 17.4 per cent to 20,538 sales.
- The average price of a Calgary home in December went up by 18.6 per cent year over year, increasing to $419,811; while they dropped 1.6 per cent throughout the rest of the country, down to $352,787.
- When looking at stats for the entire year, Calgary sales went up a whopping 18.6 per cent in 2012 when compared with 2011, increasing to a total of 26,634. Meanwhile annual number of sales dropped by 1.1 per cent throughout the rest of Canada, falling to 453,372.
- The average annual sale price for a home in Calgary rose by 2.3 per cent to $412,315. The rest of Canada also saw an increase here, although somewhat smaller at 0.3 per cent to $363,740.
“Calgary bucked the national trend in 2012 as the market began to come alive, while others began to enter a long sleep. This occurred because of two main influences,” Don Campbell, senior analyst at Real Estate Investment Network, said. “Over the previous three years, Calgary had not over-performed its underlying economic fundamentals like many other major markets across the country, especially Vancouver and Toronto. A lack of new housing being poured into the market also helped to keep the average sale price in check.”
The question is: will the trend continue. Although currently, this isn’t even much of a question. According to the Calgary Real Estate Board, January sales are already up 9.97 per cent when compared with the same time period last year.
