EDMONTON - Housing starts in the Prairies will increase almost 10 per cent this year, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation predicted Monday. The CMHC said builders will begin construction on 43,000 housing units in 2012 in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, up from roughly 39,000 in 2011. The corporation predicts the number will reach 43,450 in 2013. Lai Sing Louie, the CMHC’s regional economist for the Prairies, credited the increase to economic activity. “Employment ...

  EDMONTON - More retail space is under construction in Edmonton than anywhere else in the nation, says a new report by commercial real estate firm CBRE. “This energy-based economy is really driving a lot of things in this city from residential construction to industrial demand and when there’s low unemployment, people are buying so retailers are strong,” said Dave Young, senior vice-president and managing director of CBRE’s Edmonton office. “Will the other shoe ... Full Article...

  Alberta is expected to buck the national trend for new home construction in the next two years, according to a report by TD Economics.   After seeing a forecasted 6.3 per cent annual decline in 2011 to 25,200 housing starts, the report is predicting new home construction will increase in the province by 2.5 per cent in 2012 to 25,800 units and by another 1.6 per cent in 2013 to 26,200 units.  At the national level, housing starts are expected to be up 0.3 per cent in 2011 to 192,100 units ... Full Article...

  EDMONTON - Edmonton wrapped up a stable year in real estate in December, the Realtors Association of Edmonton said Wednesday. “It is a relief to report on the stability and health of the local real estate market,” said Chris Mooney, association president for 2011. “With prices and sales varying within a small range, there is a solid base going forward into the 2012 market.” Mooney mentioned the European debt crisis and a depressed housing market in the U.S. as major ... Full Article...

  A former media colleague from Vancouver called a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t talked to him in 10 years. After decades on the West Coast, he had just moved to Calgary with his wife and three kids. The reason? Good jobs, lower housing costs and higher disposable incomes. In other words, the same factors that draw many Canadians to Alberta. Sure, he’ll miss the ocean, he admits. “But once you get over the idea of living on the Prairies, life is pretty good here.” My ... Full Article...

The renewed slowdown in global economic activity is putting further downward pressure on already-weak residential property markets across much of the developed world, according to the latest Global Real Estate Trends report released Tuesday by Scotia Economics. And while Canada’s hot housing market also has begun to cool, it remains a “notable outperformer,” says Adrienne Warren, senior economist and real estate specialist with Scotia Economics. Of the nine major developed ... Full Article...

  Engineering and construction firms are driving up demand in Edmonton's suburban office market, according to a new national office trends report. Real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield said the third quarter saw positive absorption in Edmonton's suburbs of 120,000 square feet. Suburban office vacancy fell to 15.3 per cent from 16.6 per cent in the previous quarter. The report forecasts demand for suburban office space will continue to grow over coming quarters as large oilsands projects ... Full Article...

  EDMONTON - Alberta’s housing market continues to be flat, with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reporting Tuesday that homebuilders started construction on 22,200 homes in July — a slight improvement over the 21,800 in June. Nationally, the seasonally adjusted annual rate of urban starts increased by 4.7 per cent to 185,200 units in July. Multiple urban starts were up by 13 per cent to 120,200 units, while urban single starts decreased by 7.8 per cent in July to 65,000 ...

EDMONTON — Two years after the Great Recession ended, Alberta’s energy-fuelled economy is again flexing its muscles. With oil prices tripling from their 2009 lows, drilling activity on the upswing, unemployment falling and oilsands investment surging, Alberta looks poised for a new growth supercycle. In fact, compared with the beleaguered U.S., the debt-ridden economies of Europe or the sluggish growth in Ontario and Quebec, Canada’s energy superpower looks like a rising star ... Full Article...

  EDMONTON - House prices were little changed from March, while sales were down slightly and the number of homes on the market rose during April, the Realtors Association of Edmonton reported Tuesday. The average price of a single family detached home in April was $379,075 with a median price of $357,000, down just a few hundred dollars from March. Condo prices averaged $234,220 — up about $1,300 — while duplexes and townhouses rose by 2.3 per cent from $294,585 to $300,906 during ... Full Article...

  EDMONTON - Tighter mortgage rules coming in March aren’t causing a rush in Edmonton home sales, says the president of the Realtors Association of Edmonton. On Wednesday, the group released Edmonton-area MLS figures showing 1,044 homes were sold in February. That number shows an improvement over January, when 735 homes were sold, but that’s 20.6 per cent off the pace set a year earlier. Across Canada, sales of existing homes rose in January to the highest level since April 2010, ... Full Article...

Canadians confronted with soaring prices while trying to buy a home in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal this past year should consider Alberta — once the poster child for and overheated market, but now the most affordable province in the country according to a new report from RBC Economics Research said Thursday. Robert Hogue, senior economist with RBC and author of the report, said a combination of a housing bust, slowing economy and population outflows starting as far back as 2007 has ... Full Article...

EDMONTON - Average MLS home prices in the Edmonton region will increase slightly in 2011, but price gains will pick up in 2012 to record levels, says a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. forecast released Thursday. The CMHC’s first-quarter housing market outlook projects the average Multiple Listing Service price in 2011 for the Edmonton census metropolitan area will be $331,500 — an increase of about 0.8 per cent from 2010 when it was $328,803. But the price will rise 2.26 per ... Full Article...

  Canadian job creation was more than four times what economists predicted in January, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly rose as more people sought work. Employment rose by 69,200 and the labor force increased by 106,400, Statistics Canada said today in Ottawa. The jobless rate rose to 7.8 percent from December’s 7.6 percent. Economists forecast 7.6 percent unemployment and job growth of 15,000, according to the median estimates of 25 and 26 economists surveyed by Bloomberg ...

   Low interest rates should continue to prop up sales in Canada's resale housing market in early 2011 as the market continues to ride the momentum of a stronger than expected finish to 2010, the Canadian Real Estate Association said Friday. "Perceptions are that the housing market has stabilized and people are feeling a little more certain about getting into the market," Gregory Klump, CREA’s chief economist, said Friday after the association reported better than expected sales figures ... Full Article...

  Edmonton apartment rents remained stable while the vacancy rate edged down in October — after three straight years of increases, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said Thursday. The vacancy rate for rental apartments across the Edmonton census metropolitan area fell to 4.2 per cent from 4.5 per cent in October, showed the federal agency’s annual fall survey. “The reduction in vacancies in the Capital region has been modest in the past year due to continued high unemployment, ... Full Article...

  After four consecutive quarters of rising homeownership costs, housing affordability improved in the third quarter of 2010 thanks primarily to a drop in mortgage rates and some softening in home prices, according to the latest Housing Trends and Affordability report released today by RBC Economics Research. "The improvement in affordability during the third quarter has relieved some of the stress that had been mounting in Canada's housing market over the past year," said Robert Hogue, senior ... Full Article...

  EDMONTON — “Modest,” “moderate,” “stable” were all words used to describe the Edmonton housing market in 2011 at a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. conference Tuesday. No facet of the homes market — new, existing or rental — is expected to see dramatic gains or declines next year, according to the CMHC Housing Outlook. Richard Goatcher, the federal agency’s senior market analyst for Edmonton, said that’s because economic ...

  EDMONTON — Edmonton-area MLS home sales plunged by nearly a third in October compared with a year earlier, but prices are holding steady. There were 1,077 residential Multiple Listing Service sales for the month, down 29.6 per cent year-over-year, according to figures released Tuesday by the Realtors Association of Edmonton. Transactions also dropped more than nine per cent from September, when 1,187 homes sold. It's the fifth consecutive monthly drop in sales from a peak in April of ... Full Article...

  The housing sector received a small boost Wednesday with news from Statistics Canada that new home prices are continuing to climb, albeit slowly. The StatsCan data, which shows prices up 2.9% from a year ago, follows reports from last month that sales of existing homes climbed in August for the first time in four months. Existing home prices continued to fall, dropping 1.6% in August from a month ago. With the Canadian Real Estate Association set to release September results Friday, any price ... Full Article...

  EDMONTON — While homebuying activity is cooling in Edmonton, luxury-home sales are picking up, says a new national report. “One area of the market that has outperformed all others is the upper end,” said the Market Trends Report Fall 2010 released Tuesday. Sales of homes priced more than $700,000 are up 26 per cent over 2009, with 240 upscale properties changing hands as of August, compared to 190 units for the same period last year, it said. Fifty-five homes in the Edmonton ... Full Article...

  EDMONTON — Where are the buyers? That’s the question on the minds of realtors and home sellers. Sellers, on the other hand, are abundant in the real estate market. They’re offering more than 8,600 homes for sale on the Multiple Listing Service in the Edmonton area — about seven months’ worth of inventory and about twice what realtors would like to see with current demand. But sales are slowing, according to MLS figures released Monday. There were 1,187 ...

  EDMONTON — Migration to Alberta from other provinces jumped in the second quarter, Statistics Canada said Wednesday. From April 1 to July 1, a net total of 2,820 Canadians moved to Alberta. That means people from other provinces are being drawn by Alberta’s economy after months of dwindling or negative interprovincial migration to Alberta. Only 312 Canadians moved to Alberta in the first three months of the year and Alberta posted net losses in the two quarters before ...

  EDMONTON — Cooling demand knocked prices down for the second straight month for single-family homes while condo prices continued their steady slide for the Edmonton-region resale market in August. Multiple Listing Service data released Thursday by the Realtors Association of Edmonton showed the average single-detached dwelling sold for $372,253 in August, down 1.96 per cent from July. Condominium prices dropped 2.99 per cent to $232,230 -- plunging from a high of $253,788 in ...

EDMONTON — Expect a buyer's market for Edmonton-area resale homes in the remainder of 2010 with more balanced conditions next year, says a new report released Tuesday by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. The average resale home price in the Edmonton census metropolitan area will still increase by 3.9 per cent this year compared with last year, but total MLS sales will fall by 11.2 per cent, said the report. CMHC forecasts Edmonton area MLS sales to slide to 17,000 in 2010, with the ...

EDMONTON — House prices dropped in July as a larger inventory gave buyers more choice, and city landlords are getting set to raise rents as apartment vacancy rates tighten, according to new reports. Single family homes lost 3.1 per cent, condos 1.5 per cent and duplex/rowhouse prices just under one per cent, according to the Realtors Association of Edmonton. “The number of homes in the inventory is giving buyers’ choice,” president Larry Westergard said. “As a ...

The Bank of Canada today announced that it is raising its target for the overnight rate by one-quarter of one percentage point to 3/4 per cent. The Bank Rate is correspondingly 1 per cent and the deposit rate is 1/2 per cent. The global economic recovery is proceeding but is not yet self-sustaining. Greater emphasis on balance sheet repair by households, banks, and governments in a number of advanced economies is expected to temper the pace of global growth relative to the Bank's outlook in its ... Full Article...

The number of homes listed for sale in the Edmonton area is nearing record levels, while June residential sales fell 37 per cent from last year. At the same time, the average price of a single-family home rose nearly six per cent and the average price of all residences was up two per cent year-over-year, according to MLS figures released Monday by the Realtors Association of Edmonton. What gives? Association president Larry Westergard acknowledged the market was not yet responding to normal ... Full Article...

EDMONTON — Home construction dipped in May, but it was still the 11th consecutive month of year-over-year improvements. ATB Financial senior economist Todd Hirsch said residential construction seems to be succumbing to the interest-rate increase after a few months of reasonably strong activity. "Consumer confidence may have also been shaken somewhat by a darker global economic outlook that rocked oil prices last month." With the probability of rising mortgage rates, and global turbulence ... Full Article...

OTTAWA, Ontario, June 01, 2010 — The Bank of Canada today announced that it is raising its target for the overnight rate by one-quarter of one percentage point to 1/2 per cent. The Bank Rate is correspondingly raised to 3/4 per cent and the deposit rate is kept at 1/4 per cent, thus re-establishing the normal operating band of 50 basis points for the overnight rate. The global economic recovery is proceeding but is increasingly uneven across countries, with strong momentum in emerging ... Full Article...

Today will see a change in policy when it comes to lending guidelines for Canadian mortgage borrowers. The government of Canada has decided that the new rules below were necessary in order to continue to grow the economy at a steady pace without creating a mortgage or credit crisis seen elsewhere in the world.   Changes to Qualifying Interest Rate Where a mortgage borrower is applying for a variable rate mortgage term or a fixed term less than 5 years in length, they must now qualify based on ... Full Article...

Housing figures released by the REALTORS® Association of Edmonton for March and the first quarter of 2010 show that resale housing prices are up; listings and sales are up. “There is consumer confidence in this market and both buyers and sellers appear eager to enter the housing market,” said Larry Westergard, president of the REALTORS® Association of Edmonton. “Prices are up about 10% from a year ago and sellers are eager to take advantage. Buyers are aware of higher mortgage ... Full Article...

When the loonie rocketed nearly 30 per cent against the greenback in 2007, peaking at $1.10 US, it prompted an outpouring of national angst. Buzz Hargrove, the fiery former president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, branded it "a black day" for the nation's manufacturing and tourism sectors. After living off the avails of a weak currency for decades (the loonie previously flirted with parity way back in 1976), Canadian businesses were abruptly thrust into a new world. Most didn't like it one ... Full Article...

Builders started three times the number of Edmonton-area homes in February as they did a year earlier — showing just how far the housing market had fallen last year. Total housing starts in the Edmonton census metropolitan area reached 642 in February, compared with 213 in February 2009, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said Monday. Last month’s building activity approached February 2008 levels when housing starts totalled 692. In the single-detached sector, builders poured ...

2010 Budget Highlights • $19 billion in stimulus measures • planned spending to be cut by $17.6 billion over five years • $53.8-billion deficit cut in half in two years • $1 billion for training programs for workers • $55 million for youth employment • $40 million for older workers • $180 million for aboriginal skills training • Maximum length of work-sharing programs increased to 78 weeks • $1.6 billion for employment insurance benefits • ... Full Article...

Prices for residential property sold through the Edmonton Multiple Listing Service® changed marginally through February. Sales activity, however, was up dramatically when compared to last month or the same month last year.   The average* single family dwelling price was $369,573 for February up just 1.4% from January; 5.6% from a year ago. Condominium prices dipped 3.8% in the month from $240,686 to $231,530. Duplex and rowhouse prices were up 3.3% to $315,390. “While prices remained ... Full Article...

Canada's economic recovery picked up speed in the final quarter of last year, growing by a better-than-expected annualized rate of five per cent, Statistics Canada reported Monday. "For a third consecutive quarter, growth in final domestic demand was led by increases in personal expenditures, government expenditures, and investment in residential structures," the federal agency said. "Export and import volumes both rose for a second consecutive quarter, with growth in exports outpacing that of ... Full Article...

TORONTO -- Canadian home resale prices rose for an eighth straight month in December with overall prices rising to end the year at a record high, a report on Wednesday said. The Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index, which measures price changes for repeat sales of single-family homes in six metropolitan areas, showed overall prices up 1.2% from November. The report did not provide actual prices. Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver reported gains exceeding 1% in the month, ... Full Article...