It’s so nice, no one wants to move. At least that’s the conclusion I keep coming back to every time I look at stats from the Calgary Real Estate Board.
The board puts together a nice snapshot of the real estate market in the city and surrounding suburbs on a monthly basis, crunching the numbers and offering insights to make sense of a continually-evolving situation. In Okotoks, the recurring theme lately has been a lack of inventory and what that’s doing to drive the price of housing upward.
In January, the board stated: “The sudden gain in new listings was insufficient to cause material changes to the low inventory levels. With just over one month of supply, conditions remain tight in Okotoks, driving prices up.”
In February, the message was decidedly similar: “Inventory levels are near record lows for the month and are 63 per cent below long-term trends. Okotoks has struggled to add enough supply to keep pace with demand, keeping conditions tight and driving home prices.”
Last month, it was more of the same: “There were only 54 units available in March, a year-over-year decline of 10 per cent and nearly 70 per cent below long-term trends for the month... March was the lowest March reported since 2006.”
Given Okotoks has grown significantly over the last couple of decades, you’d think the number of listings would have expanded along with the town. There are definitely more houses, just not more houses for sale, which is great if you’re looking to sell, but not so great if you’re a prospective buyer.
I had a look on realtor.ca the other day and there were 74 listings, although once you remove the ones where the house is no more than an artist’s rendering at this point, the number falls to somewhere in the mid-50s.
If you’re not looking for a condo/townhouse, throw out 16 of those listings and if your budget doesn’t stretch beyond $1 million, get rid of another nine, leaving roughly 30 properties from which to choose. That’s not many when you consider that’s everything on the market between $500,000 and $900,000.
When a buyer narrows it down based on their price range as well as size/style/condition of the house, the number of options shrinks so significantly that any thought of including a specific neighbourhood in the calculation becomes moot.
This predicament for buyers will be addressed, at least in part, through additional supply via some of the larger developments that are now underway, but that doesn’t do anything when it comes to all the homeowners, like myself, who have no intention of moving.
If the turnover rate of the re-sell market continues to be so low that it suppresses inventory levels, then I suspect even added supply will only be able to do so much to provide buyers with sufficient options to keep prices in check.
It must be considered a good thing that people are so happy here they don’t want to leave, but that’s not necessarily good news for those who want to join the party.
