The Altario Quarterly (July, 2014)

Click HERE to read the entire July, 2014 newsletter, including graphs and Camrose rental and building stats

The Camrose Housing Market in Q2 2014
 

What a quarter -- the upward trend continues! While our tracking in Q1 2014 produced the highest rolling 12-month average ever to that point ($280,923), it turns out that this was just a prelude to what was to come in Q2. Q2 2014 exhibited the 2nd-highest number of sales in a quarter that our tracking has ever shown (135 vs. 140 in Q2 2013). However, Q2 also produced the following:  

• the highest mean price for any quarter ever and the first quarter ever to break $300,000 ($309,639); 

• the highest rolling 12-month mean price ever: $282,442, which represents an increase of 1.6% over the last quarter and an increase of 4.6% vs. Q2 2013  
• the highest median price ever: $292,500, which represents a 4.3% increase vs. a year ago
• in Camrose, there have been 44 sales of over $400,000 during the past 12 months, with 21 of these having occurred in Q2 2014 alone!  

Overall, the quarter just passed can be classified as a breakout quarter and 2014 as a breakout year, as the graph in the newsletter suggests. As this is written, there are 146 residential properties on the market in Camrose via MLS (on the Central Alberta board and the Edmonton board combined), excluding vacant land. If we consider this relative to the 135 sales that occurred in Q2 2014 (keeping in mind that Q2 is almost always the busiest quarter of the year), supply and demand appear to be finding a balance, which is in contrast to the significant under-supply that was evident 6 months ago. If that is the case, it’s likely that Camrose will see a levelling of prices over the remainder of the year, although not necessarily a decrease in volume, notwithstanding the seasonal strength of Q2 generally.