The Gord Piper & Associates Real Estate Blog

Stay ahead of the curve by following our Monthly Market Snapshot of the Calgary Real Estate Market. This shows what’s really happening in the Calgary Real Estate Market. The market is driven by supply and demand so here we show the inventory (supply) and sales (demand) and the effect on the price of Calgary Real Estate. A simple way to keep up to date and ahead of most!

Below are the details along with a few comments, all numbers were taken from the Calgary Real Estate Boards Stats package for Realtors.

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Calgary Real Estate Stats have changed.

The Calgary Real Estate Board just changed the operating system for Realtors and with that the Monthly Stats categories have changed as well. Here is the categories.

What this means is simply that attached homes are now taken out of the Single family category and lumped in with the townhouse category. There are a few other classification changes but they are very small and won’t show in the stats. This will affect a few of the numbers below.

Oil Prices and the impact on the Calgary Real Estate Market.

I am certainly not going to predict the future here as I am not an expert in the Oil Industry. What I find interesting is that in what I have been reading there seems to be two sides

• Optimists are predicting that we will be back to at least the 60 – 70 dollar oil by mid year
• The pessimists are saying that we will be low forever or years anyway

My Stats summary below will show you the facts of what has happened to date and some short term predictions. Please note that the market shifted very fast and when oil prices rebound the market can shift very quickly in the other direction. The big question is when? And if you have the answer to that please share it with me.

Now onto the Stats Market Snapshot

Calgary Listing Inventory:  Yes, Listings are up substantially this month. While January we usually see an increase from December,  this number is very large. With the uncertainty around the oil prices many people that would have listed in spring jumped into the market early.

Calgary Sales:

Typically sales in January increase over December however this is not the case this year.

If I compare sales numbers to last January (which was a strong month) we are down about 37% in total sales.

Calgary Real Estate Sales Prices:

Although we have seen a large increase in inventory and a large decrease in sales, the prices have changed very little so far.

Sales Prices “Year to Date”

Year to date prices – Same as above as were in first month.

Absorption Rate (Months of Inventory)  (the inventory divided by the number of sales in the last month). What does this mean you might ask?

*** Absorption Rate:

The absorption rate increased substantially for all categories. While last month we were still in a seller’s market we have clearly moved to a buyer’s market. What this would typically mean is that until things change we are seeing a high supply and weak demand which will put downward pressure on pricing as buyer’s in this market can typically negotiate better prices.

**Please note that these numbers do change on a community basis and more so for towns. If you would like to find stats on your community just let me know. If you have any questions about this summary, the attached stats package or any Real Estate questions please feel free to contact us.