March 2010 Calgary Real Estate Statistics

Metro-Calgary Single Family Homes

A total of 1396 properties changed hands in March recording an average price increase of 2.8% from February to $471,269 – its highest level since June 2008.   It’s a 12.1% increase from last March when the average price was $420,354.

The median price was also up month-over-month to $423,000.   That’s a 2.9% increase from February and a 12.8% rise from last March.  (Highest level since Feb 2008)

Inventory has risen almost 30% in less than a month to sit at over 4014, but is still about 7.6% less than the amount of listings available last March.   Last year,  inventory peaked in March with 4369.

Metro-Calgary Condo

609 sales resulted in average condo prices increasing to $296,660 which is a 4.8% increase from last month and a 4.4% increase from March 2009.  

The median condo price was $275,000.   That’s a 3.4% increase from last month and a 5.7% increase year-over-year.

Condo inventory increased 23% over last month to end up with 2148.  This is also a 4.6% increase from March 2009′s month-end inventory.    Inventory is now at its highest level since November 2008.

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more to come…

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Some interesting tidbits from CIBC today:

CIBC World Markets Report, April 1, 2010

Over the past two years, the degree of volatility observed in the Canadian housing market has been unprecedented. Within this short time frame, house prices fell by almost 13%, only to rebound by an impressive 21%. Meanwhile, resale activity is now rising by close to 67% on a year-over-year basis after falling by close to 40% in 2008. Housing starts are presently 33% higher than in April 2009, despite dropping by more than 50% earlier in the recession. In fact, no other segment of the economy has rebounded as quickly as the housing market, making it one of the real surprises of this recession.

This rapid uptick in housing activity, in the face of recessionary conditions elsewhere in the economy, raises concerns about its sustainability. It’s causing some to wonder whether house prices are rising too quickly given current economic fundamentals. Using a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) housing valuation model as a base, and updating it to reflect the most recently available Canadian data, we estimate that the Canadian housing market as a whole is beginning to overshoot its ‘fair value.’ At just under $350,000, the current average price of a home is estimated to be roughly 7% over what would be consistent with current housing market fundamentals, including interest rates, income growth, rents and demographics. However, that modest overshooting is far from uniform across the country. Those figures are skewed to western Canada, which has seen the most dramatic swings in house prices over the past 24 months. That market now appears to be overvalued by roughly 10% to 15%, suggesting that the imbalance in the rest of the country is much more modest.

Note, however, that overvaluation does not necessarily mean a bubble or a dramatic price correction. Given that the current overvaluation is occurring in a context of historically low interest rates, what we are most likely witnessing is a temporary period of exuberance that is ‘borrowing’ activity from the future; households are taking advantage of lower rates, and accelerating their borrowing and home purchasing activities. To the extent that current activity is simply a redistribution of sales from the future to the present, the housing market of tomorrow may be in store for a more muted level of activity. Housing starts will also catch up with the sudden spurt in demand, with the increase in supply helping to moderate price trends.

Rather than plunging, house prices are more likely to stagnate in coming years (or fall modestly in the most overheated markets) as fundamentals catch up with a market that has gotten ahead of itself.

(Source)

and this report:

Despite the rebound in stock valuations and the recent surge in home prices, over the past two years Canadians have seen their liabilities rising twice as fast as their assets. Consumer fundamentals are at their weakest point in 15 years and do not match up with recent rebounds in sentiment, a new CIBC World Markets report says.

(Source)