CALGARY - As the curtain rises on the 10-day extravaganza that is the famed Calgary Stampede, homebuyers are also stampeding to snap up real estate in Alberta’s largest city.
The frenzy in Calgary — the city set an all-time record for home sales in June, up 11 per cent year-over-year, with apartment sales alone up an eye-popping 48 per cent — flies in the face of what’s happening nationally. The average selling price of a home in Calgary last month increased by almost seven per cent from a year earlier to $552,273, according to the Calgary Real Estate Board.
Unlike Toronto and Vancouver, whose overheated housing markets have been a topic of national conversation in recent years, Calgary is coming out of a years-long slump that began with the oil price crash of 2015. People are also flocking to the province, in particular the city. Statistics Canada says Alberta saw the largest net interprovincial migration of all the provinces during the first three months of the year, with more than 15,000 people arriving from other parts of the country — in particular, Ontario, B.C. and Saskatchewan.“A lot of that growth coming into Alberta is funnelling into Calgary. Calgary’s market is performing more than other markets ,” Lurie said.