October Market Update

With all of the recent, positive housing data, I thought this would be a good time to take a look at how the Calgary and Canadian real estate markets are performing. The most recent average home prices, released by CREB, indicate that we've seen almost 9 months of uninterrupted growth. Back in December of 2008, the average house price in Calgary was $413,049 and as of September 2009, the average house price was $462,465.

Another important real estate market indicator that has seen improvement in the last month is the amount of new housing starts. Generally, residential construction companies build 6 months to a year in advance. And, an increase in the amount of new starts translates into a vote of confidence for both today's housing market but more importantly, the housing market 6 to 12 months down the road. For the month of October, housing starts increased 5.4%, building on increases in previous months.

And with all of this positive data, CMHC has gone ahead and improved their forecasts and outlooks for 2010. After a year of dismal news on the Canadian economic and real estate fronts, this is welcome news.

As always, visit my Calgary Real Estate website for further information regarding the Calgary Real Estate market.