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New year, new shift in Fort McMurray housing market

Last Updated Feb 9, 2023 at 11:01 am MDT

Image supplied by Fort McMurray Realtors®.

Fort McMurray Realtors® released its first housing market update of the new year.

In its January update, Realtors® said sales activity eased to levels not seen since before the pandemic with a more than 37 per cent drop in sales compared with this time last year.

The group found new listings increased by nearly 25 per cent year-over-year, adding inventory in the market, and indicating a shift in the market.

“There is no question that there has been a shift in the market as the months of supply approached seven months in January. However, conditions have not become as oversupplied as they were after the oil price crash in 2014.”

As inventory increased, Realtors also noticed a decline in the average price of real estate.

There was about a 15 per cent drop in total residential sales in January year-over-year with an average price of over $316-thousand.

The price of semi-detached homes dropped by a third, though sales in apartment condominiums jumped by about 28 per cent.

“Last January, 55 per cent of the sales was under $400,000, far less than the nearly 70 per cent of the sales that are currently occurring in the lower price ranges in January 2023.”

The average price of a single-family detached home in Fort McMurray is $485,699.

National outlook

One economist is expecting to see a drop in home listings in the first quarter of 2023.

Speaking with CityNews, Rishi Sondhi at TD Economics said that decline in Q1 will be followed by a rebound later in the year, slowing to a more modest growth pace in 2024.

The drop in listings in the first quarter is coming because of subdued sales and declining prices.

However, Sondhi expects an increase of about seven per cent sometime in the second half of this year, which will slow to a growth pace of about two per cent next year.

He added rising demand will keep markets balanced, underpinned by growth in home prices in the second half of 2023.