Home Building Blog - Eco-Friendly and Green
Calgary housing surges
March 14th, 2006 by Ryan JohnstonFound at The Globe and Mail. This is a local story that gives a bit of background to some of the problems we experienced in January. We are very lucky to have found a new builder to take over our project in this tight building market.
CALGARY - Calgary’s housing market is dramatically outpacing the rest of the country, in a price surge not seen since the real estate bubble in Toronto 15 years ago.
The price of new housing in the oil patch capital rose by more than a fifth for the 12 months ended January, 2006 — triple the rate of the entire country, and far ahead of second-place Edmonton, according to Statistics Canada.
The numbers are impressive, but they do not convey the full extent to which Calgary’s real estate market is being transformed. Bidding wars for properties, once a rarity, are now a fixture in nearly half of deals. Developers are poaching construction workers straight from rivals’ work sites. There are 10-month waiting lists for new housing. And some builders have simply thrown up their hands in the face of soaring material and labour costs, freezing new construction.
It all adds up to Calgary joining the rarefied ranks of real estate occupied by Toronto and Vancouver. “We’re in the big leagues in so many ways,” said Alan Tennant, a real estate broker in the Calgary area.
Read more about the Calgary housing boom.
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