Once-hot housing market chills

Calgary’s prices stable as sales take steep decline

Calgary’s residential real estate market in the first half of this year has been marked by declining sales, increasing listings and stabilizing sale prices compared with a year ago. The story in both the single-family home and condominium markets is similar. For the first six months of 2008, single-family home sales are down by more than 31 per cent compared with the same period a year ago, while condo sales decreased by more than 36 per cent.

New listings have increased by nearly eight per cent for single-family homes and by more than 23 per cent for condos.

The average sale price in both markets is close to a year ago — up by 0.2 per cent for single-family homes ($472,163) and down by 0.76 per cent for condos ($312,460), according to statistics released by the Calgary Real Estate Board today.

“I think our market is remaining steady,” said Bonnie Wegerich, CREB’s president-elect. “We have a slight increase in metro single-family sales this month (from May). I think it’s just moving along quite nicely. There’s no big surprises and it’s nice to see this.

“The new listings on the market have come down, so I think that’s encouraging, yet at the same time there’s still lots of properties for people to have a look at, so they have a choice,” she said. “Single-family sales in June are down a little bit over last year, down slightly from May, but nothing drastic.”

The 1,439 June sales in the single-family home market were down 18.1 per cent from June 2007, while the average sale price was also off by 4.65 per cent, to $473,774.

The June numbers were up from May sales, at 1,368, while the average price decreased from $479,564, registered the previous month.

The June condo market painted a similar picture. Sales were down 29.8 per cent from a year ago and the average sale price dropped by 2.55 per cent, to $315,042. In May, there were 577 condo sales in Calgary metro and the average sale price was $311,816.

The June MLS numbers are not surprising, said Lai Sing Louie, senior market analyst in Calgary for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. — it’s a trend that has been predominant for most of this year.

The sales activity being down roughly a third from a year ago will likely continue for the rest of the year, he said.

And with active listings for single-family homes and for condos remaining high it’s still “putting downward pressure on prices,” he said.

“We’re not going to likely see much price movement from where we are now,” said Louie. “It appears that for condos it really has been pretty much stable at around the $311,000 and $312,000 mark. . . . We’re looking at active listings probably peaking before the fall sometime between now and October.

“All things considered with all that supply out there, one would expect that prices would fall more than they have.”

He said the peak for single-family home prices last year was in July when they averaged nearly $506,000.