The Stampede City is home to Canada’s hottest real estate market, beating out Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver due to unprecedented growth, better housing affordability and a healthy investment environment. Josh Sherman, writing for the Wahi Realty brokerage, says, “Real estate markets in many Canadian cities remain quiet as potential homebuyers hold out for more rate cuts from the Bank of Canada, but one urban centre continues to be a housing hotspot.” “While home prices in Canada’s three largest cities — Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver — are flat or declining on a year-over-year basis, Calgary's home prices are soaring as sustained demand pushes them higher and higher.” Cowtown’s benchmark home price in June was $608,000, an 8.5% year-over-year increase and up from $605,300 in May. “Among the major Canadian cities, it’s pretty much Calgary and then everyone else when it comes to home price trends,” writes BMO Senior Economist Robert Kavcic in a recent note to clients. Three key factors are driving Calgary’s market, says Kavic. “The big drivers in Calgary’s outperformance have been even stronger population growth (juiced by interprovincial inflows), better affordability and valuations that might still make some sense for investors,” he writes. According to Statistics Canada, 2023 was a record-breaking year for interprovincial migration to Alberta. Between July 2022 and July 2023, 56,245 more people stampeded to Alberta from another province than left it for elsewhere in Canada, the highest net interprovincial increase on record, with data going back to the early ‘70s. With the benchmark prices of homes in Toronto and Vancouver more than $1 million, Calgary’s real estate market, where many homes can be bought for less than half that amount, may have encouraged Canadians to change their home province. National Bank’s most recent Housing Affordability Monitor report shows affordability in Calgary increased in the first quarter of 2024, with mortgage payments on a median-priced home in Calgary taking up 44.8% of a median-income-earning household’s pay, compared to 95.7% in Vancouver and 82.4% in Toronto. Toronto and Vancouver were the real estate ‘investment capitals’ before prices in those markets soared into the stratosphere and now, there are signs that this type of buyers have saddled up and shifted their focus on Calgary. In 2024’s first quarter, the share of homes in the Calgary metropolitan area bought and then sold within six months reached 3.5%, up from 1.6% two years prior, when home-flipping activity began to climb, according to analysis by the Bank of Canada. Just 0.5% of Toronto homes and 1.7% of Vancouver homes are flipped within a six-month window. Sherman writes homes with more affordable price tags are seeing the strongest demand in Calgary, as per Royal LePage CEO Karen Yolevski. “Price points that are $500,000 and under, that’s the hottest market in Calgary right now,” she tells Wahi. “While $500,000 doesn’t go far in markets such as Toronto and Vancouver, in Calgary, recent Wahi analysis identified 40 neighbourhoods where the median price of a single-family home was below that threshold,” writes Sherman. “Of these more affordably priced neighbourhoods, 65% were in overbidding territory, suggesting stronger demand.” The Calgary Real Estate Board reported 40% of all sales in Calgary in June were over asking prices. June’s Bank of Canada rate cut didn’t bring the heat to Calgary’s already hot market, but Yolevski told Wahi increasingly lower rates could create affordability challenges for some buyers as demand drives prices up so high any savings from cheaper mortgage payments are erased. “But, generally speaking, those that are looking at secondary markets for affordability, lower interest rates will help, provided that price points remain somewhat stable or don’t increase to an extent that they erase the gains from those interest-rate decreases,” she adds.
The Stampede City is home to Canada’s hottest real estate market, beating out Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver due to unprecedented growth, better housing affordability and a healthy investment environment. Josh Sherman, writing for the Wahi Realty brokerage, says, “Real estate markets in many Canadian cities remain quiet as potential homebuyers hold out for more rate cuts from the Bank of Canada, but one urban centre continues to be a housing hotspot.” “While home prices in Canada’s three largest cities — Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver — are flat or declining on a year-over-year basis, Calgary's home prices are soaring as sustained demand pushes them higher and higher.” Cowtown’s benchmark home price in June was $608,000, an 8.5% year-over-year increase and up from $605,300 in May. “Among the major Canadian cities, it’s pretty much Calgary and then everyone else when it comes to home price trends,” writes BMO Senior Economist Robert Kavcic in a recent note to clients. Three key factors are driving Calgary’s market, says Kavic. “The big drivers in Calgary’s outperformance have been even stronger population growth (juiced by interprovincial inflows), better affordability and valuations that might still make some sense for investors,” he writes. According to Statistics Canada, 2023 was a record-breaking year for interprovincial migration to Alberta. Between July 2022 and July 2023, 56,245 more people stampeded to Alberta from another province than left it for elsewhere in Canada, the highest net interprovincial increase on record, with data going back to the early ‘70s. With the benchmark prices of homes in Toronto and Vancouver more than $1 million, Calgary’s real estate market, where many homes can be bought for less than half that amount, may have encouraged Canadians to change their home province. National Bank’s most recent Housing Affordability Monitor report shows affordability in Calgary increased in the first quarter of 2024, with mortgage payments on a median-priced home in Calgary taking up 44.8% of a median-income-earning household’s pay, compared to 95.7% in Vancouver and 82.4% in Toronto. Toronto and Vancouver were the real estate ‘investment capitals’ before prices in those markets soared into the stratosphere and now, there are signs that this type of buyers have saddled up and shifted their focus on Calgary. In 2024’s first quarter, the share of homes in the Calgary metropolitan area bought and then sold within six months reached 3.5%, up from 1.6% two years prior, when home-flipping activity began to climb, according to analysis by the Bank of Canada. Just 0.5% of Toronto homes and 1.7% of Vancouver homes are flipped within a six-month window. Sherman writes homes with more affordable price tags are seeing the strongest demand in Calgary, as per Royal LePage CEO Karen Yolevski. “Price points that are $500,000 and under, that’s the hottest market in Calgary right now,” she tells Wahi. “While $500,000 doesn’t go far in markets such as Toronto and Vancouver, in Calgary, recent Wahi analysis identified 40 neighbourhoods where the median price of a single-family home was below that threshold,” writes Sherman. “Of these more affordably priced neighbourhoods, 65% were in overbidding territory, suggesting stronger demand.” The Calgary Real Estate Board reported 40% of all sales in Calgary in June were over asking prices. June’s Bank of Canada rate cut didn’t bring the heat to Calgary’s already hot market, but Yolevski told Wahi increasingly lower rates could create affordability challenges for some buyers as demand drives prices up so high any savings from cheaper mortgage payments are erased. “But, generally speaking, those that are looking at secondary markets for affordability, lower interest rates will help, provided that price points remain somewhat stable or don’t increase to an extent that they erase the gains from those interest-rate decreases,” she adds.
