A growth of existing home inventory has created a buyers’ market in the St. Albert real estate market, said local broker James Mabey.
May statistics show that sales activity in St. Albert is down from the same month last year. While prices are holding up, it’s clear that the market, while not totally out of balance, has swung in favour of buyers, Mabey said.
“The buyers are definitely sitting in the driver’s seat when it comes to making an offer,” he said.
April was a great month in the local real estate market, Mabey said. But about halfway through May he started noticing that inventory levels were starting to grow as new homes were coming online while others were remaining unsold.
There are currently 335 single-family homes and 130 condominiums listed in St. Albert, Mabey said. Two months ago there were 227 single-family homes and 126 condos.
The average selling price in May was $443,000 for single-family and $272,000 for condos. The first quarter averages were $446,000 and $269,000, respectively.
April and May are usually very busy months in real estate. It appears that the market might have peaked a month early, Mabey said.
Contributing to this is an increase in buying activity from buyers who had pre-approved mortgages in place before interest rates began to climb. Tighter rules to qualify for a mortgage that took effect in April also generated early activity that has since died down.
“Financial incentives, changes to mortgage qualifying rules and the threat of increasing mortgage rates caused the local market to peak a little earlier this year,” said Larry Westergard, president of the Realtors Association of Edmonton.
“Many buyers exercised their options in April, leaving the customer base a little leaner in May,” he added.
Mabey feels that interest rates, while higher than they were a few months ago, are still at very attractive levels, which bodes well for the rest of this year.
“There’s a lot of good fundamentals in our marketplace. There’s no doom and gloom around the corner,” he said.
St. Albert real estate stats
Single family
2010 2009 2008
Units 92 121 80
Average 442,952 395,439 438,116
Median 405,000 364,000 405,000
Condo
Units 29 32 31
Average 272,190 262,722 279,955
Median 255,000 253,500 268,800
