There’s more good news for real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and home sellers this month as the nation’s home sales continue to churn on. The Canadian Real Estate Association released new stats this week that showed national home sales were up oonce again in September, and it’s largely the major city centres across the country – Calgary, Edmonton, Greater Vancouver, and Greater Toronto – that helped lead the way. That, and the fact that the market has come back from the new mortgage rules that were instated last summer.
The Canadian Real Estate Association stated that national sales increased by 18.2 per cent when compared with a year ago; and some might be surprised from just where those sales came from. Calgary’s numbers rose by 20.5 per cent to 2,475 transactions while Vancouver saw a whopping increase of 64.3 per cent, for a total of 2,524 sales. Toronto saw less than that, but still more than many were probably expecting, experiencing a rise of 26.1 per cent from their 7,411 transactions, and Edmonton saw a rise of 24.8 per cent, up to 1,712 transactions.
Grace Yan, a real estate agent with Re/Max in Calgary, says that there were many reasons for the gains seen in the city she sells in.
“Currently it is still a strong sellers’ market wherein we are seeing properties in prime locations come on the market and within a day being sold unconditionally for above listed price when priced accordingly,” she says.
“We are still experiencing vast amounts of relocations from all parts of the world as Calgary’s oil and gas economy remains strong. We are expecting the rest of the year to remain a strong, healthy resale market due to the limitation of suburban developments and the long periods of time to obtain building permits for new builds along with limited public transportation in public areas.”
CREA’s chief economist, Gregory Klump, has other reasons for the influxes seen across the country, though. And he’s attributing them largely to those mortgage rules instated last year, which caused many markets to soften greatly across the nation. Now that buyers have saved up those deposits and become more accustomed to the rules, the sales figures are starting to show positives once again.
“Year-over-year increases in the sales over the past couple of months highlights how activity softened across much of the country following the introduction of tighter mortgage rules last summer,” says Klump.
“While the momentum for sales activity began improving a few months ago, it may be losing steam after having only just climbed back in line with an average of the past 10 years. Even so, one can see large year-over-year changes when comparing activity to a month like September 2012, when sales dropped to the lowest level for that month in more than a decade.”
