Calgary Apartment Market Has Shifted: Is a Correction Coming?

Is the real estate market in Calgary going to crash? Well if you ask some of my YouTube commenters they would say yes. From what I see right now I would say no. Let's do a quick crash course of what that actually means. A correction is a drop of more than 10% and a crash is a decline of more than 20%. So when you start to look at our numbers right now we would see that we're actually only down 2.2% so we're not even remotely close to correction territory. We are seeing regular normal seasonal adjustments going into the winter months. People are anticipating rate drops which has happened we've seen another 0.5 rate drop today and the market is still relatively strong compared to long-term trends of what Calgary has been through in the past. So let's dive into that. Now my name is Adam Fyfe and I am your Calgary REALTOR®. If you want to set up a If you want to know what your home is valued at in today's market it is absolutely interesting to see how much pricing is fluctuating in this current state and a lot of people are curious about that. But let's continue on. If you want to read this on your own go ahead and skip to the next chapter. Sales in November slowed over last year's record high however the 429 sales were 47% higher than long-term trends. New listings for apartment style units have been on the rise with like 1,500 units available in November. More supply is now available than during the spring and it is the only sector to see levels rise above long-term trends for the month. The additional supply caused a month's supply to push above three months and is taking some pressure off of home prices. As of November the unadjusted benchmark price is $337,000 down over last month but still 9% higher than last year. Supply has improved for units priced above $200,000 but most gains have been the $300,000 to $500,000 range. Okay so we're still above long-term trends for activity but we're starting to see more inventory from new listings. So apartment prices right now as we mentioned are still up almost 9% year over year but we're down $4,000 from last month. So let's just take a quick peek here at what's going on this month and you can see that in terms of sales yes we're down. Last year we saw over like 130 ish sales compared to what we were last year. New listings were actually down which is good to see for this market. I was a little bit worried that we're going to see a huge influx but the inventories are up dramatically right. We're almost double we only had 900 units in the entire city now we're at about 1,500 units. Bigger thing to note though is look at the days on market. The average days on market is at 45 days okay. Let's remember that in January I gotta stop using that mouse in January of 2023 we're at 44 days right. So again looking at long-term trends it's nothing too wild but when we're looking at what we've been used to over the last little while yes 45 days is definitely buyer market territory okay. So when we look at the sales here year to sales right last year this year you can see that we're actually up in price even though we're down in sales. New listings year to date we're actually up 12 percent right so last year at this time we had 93 this year we have about 10. Inventory is up months of supply right we don't look at the year-to-date average we actually look at the month the month of supplies at three and a half percent very clearly a balanced market very fast approaching to a buyer's market. Sales to listing ratios is down considerable right last year at 80 this year we had 68 especially if you look at the month itself last year I had 83 sales sales in new listing this year we have 65 again really showing that it's more of a balanced market. Sales to list price is down days on market compared to last year is up quite a bit okay. Pause the video if you want to touch on this this is just the price points and the year to date in the month of last year I'm not going to touch on that. You can see last year year to date we had a lot of sales in the $200,000 price range for apartments this year look at the shift right you can see the $300,000 and you can even see the $400,000 dramatically increase from last year so even though the total sales amount is down we're seeing a higher sales price for those apartments sell a lot quicker obviously the prices have increased which is obvious here. So with that being said yes the market is starting to slow down it's great to see inventory falling a bit the sales have fallen a bit I would imagine that there was going to be a big price or sorry a percentage decrease in the benchmark price or sorry in the interest rate which it has so I would imagine December is actually going to see a small uptick you can see last year in December we only had 400 sales and it was one of the hottest years on record right you can see how little of inventory we have obviously this year we're going to have again upwards of 1400 units left over at the end of the month but I would imagine we're probably going to see an increase in the sales compared to last year okay so total inventory by price range not going to touch on this very much you can see that the $300,000 price range in the entire city has one of the most amounts of inventory I can guarantee actually if you break this seven to one million 300 would actually stand out with the most amount of inventory right so you could get a really good deal or if you're actually going to list your $300,000 condo be careful make sure that you're going in at a competitive price point okay now I do want to point out that the colors on this do have all of the quadrants and all of the quadrants are here not only the street abbreviations but the actual quadrants themselves so in city center you're going to have all four street abbreviations northwest northeast southwest southeast right self you're going to have southwest southeast if you're curious about that go ahead and ask because this is how Calgary is actually broken down in terms of the quadrants there's eight now sales by property type okay not going to touch on this too much obviously we can see the city center for apartments is always going to see the biggest amount south Calgary is also one of the larger quadrants in the city so they always have a little bit more everything else is kind of rough roughly at like 30 to 50 sales okay inventory or sorry months of supply obviously slowing down inventory increasing we are going to see some sort of price corrections going into 2025 but I don't think we're going to see any sort of um um I said price corrections but now I need to actually learn the proper terminology because we're probably not going to see price corrections in 2025 of a decrease of more than 10 but we might actually see some stabilization I would argue that we're probably going to have a fairly busy year in 2025 so months of supply going back to that quadrant portion you can see that apartments in general are the highest months of supply in terms of all property types meaning that they are the slowest market you can see northeast here has a astronomically high amount of inventory they had a bunch of projects that closed this year and just not enough buyers moving to the northeast to actually absorb that so if we're going to see any major price corrections in any quadrant it's going to be northeast okay let's keep that in mind north uh city center and south all are still in balanced buyer territory whereas you if you look at southwest um west as well as northwest they're still in seller territory I screwed up those words we're kind of going wow I actually really screwed that up uh balanced conditions going to buyer territory but here we are balanced conditions still in sellers territory um it's a problem where I try to actually record these things all in one take it's basically a presentation that I can't screw up and I like to twist my words sometimes so southeast southwest northwest are all still in that seller territory so you have a little bit more competition as a buyer as a seller you have a little bit more leverage compared to other quadrants in the city so benchmark price okay this is super important for anyone who is curious about what benchmark prices are so you can see that they're they all look relatively the same but like I say in every video we need to make sure that we're actually putting the attributes into play now the attributes are linked in the description you can scroll down this is a free spreadsheet that I've created you can see that there's lots of different things so as an example east Calgary is a 2004 built 852 square feet let's just go down to southeast 2015 901 very large difference there so when you start to look at these price points you've got to make sure that you're putting that into perspective right where the southeast and the east clearly are you know different attributes but you can see that the actual product type itself is also different okay so you want to make sure to put those attributes into play and actually put them you know compare them properly so let's move on from here year over year growth apartments actually saw the most growth right most affordable product in Calgary you can see that they're still hovering around that 10 percent you can see that south and west have seen the biggest increases about 13 to 14 percent year over year where at city center uh what is that northwest as well as southeast all below 10 still pretty large increases over last year but we're noticing that benchmark price started to slow down a little bit so we'll see if we get into negative territory which is interesting and I'm not sure if that's going to happen quite yet so you want to know what your home is valued at super rad tool this is an instant home event an instant home evaluation it's really slick with condos it's fairly accurate with condos it's me that looks at it yes I'll probably reach out yes I'll probably call I'll send you a video introducing myself and going through all of the different things that I could offer behind the scenes but you can either scan the QR code or link in the description now the MLS is super fascinating okay so a lot of people reach out to me asking questions we need to utilize the MLS as much as we can right we can look at this and and determine what is actually happening in this market based off of the data that's provided to us very data-driven a lot of interesting things going on like even if you look at Beltline here right you've got a couple pending right off the hop no two days two days four days right you still have some movement in this market at 2.5 actually went pending within five days didn't see that one coming um you can see a couple other ones here Chaparral Lower Mount Royal so there's still some movement relatively quick on some apartments that are priced well but you can see how big the gap is between all of the actual actives um I would I would actually be curious of how far I have to scroll down seven days there was the fastest sale for the most recent data for apartments is a Dover sale for 250,000 two and one right so it's at 1995 actually a pretty good deal for 250,000 we scroll all the way down here even more the next sale was 10 days right it took 10 days Point McKay and it took 10 days for Spruce Cliff right still some movement but absolutely slowing down just keep that in mind okay microeconomic breakdown this is the uh kind of the um information for all you property quadrants out there okay now I'm really twisting my words so we've got our sales we've got our new listings we've got our sales and new listing ratio look at the northeast 38 very clearly a 6.31 months of supply down 78,000 surprisingly only down $700 from last month okay this is previous month this is last month overall they saw over $8,000 decrease in northeast alone okay now when you start to look at this northwest right they had more sales than they did new listings 126 still seller-ish market yet we're seeing price decreases in that quadrant as well people are starting to realize that there's more inventory or selection on the market so they can drive those prices down so buyers you know do your research sellers do your research right these are different things that you need to consider when getting onto the market right one piece of the pie but very important to consider now city of Calgary apartment price change interesting stuff will we dip down to the negatives this is going to be the property type that actually does it if there's going to be one property type in Calgary that dips into the negatives it will be apartments and it will be because there's so many new construction uh options for people to choose from when one complex comes to the market right yes they have to have 70 percent of their units sold but at the same time a lot of those investors sell their product within the first week right speed to market is very important for you investors looking to sell your units but you have to be very careful because I've seen it firsthand in 2024 30 listings come to the market and all of a sudden there is just way too much to choose from and you have to stand out in terms of price points so for buyers and you're looking at new construction you know do your research have some patience you investors out there selling your product take your time or sorry act quickly but you have to make sure that you're doing your research to see how many things are going to actually pop up in that market speed to listing is very important there so going down and grab a whole hair are we going to slow down absolutely are we going to get into any sort of negative year-over-year space right so we're going to draw a line basically right here dropping down to like 330 then we start to dip into the negative year-over-year I think there's a possibility of that but at the same time I think that there's a lot of strength in the Alberta market right we yes we've seen a right decrease which is going to spur activity when you start to look at some of the job increases that Alberta is seeing where the highest level is over seven years the challenge is that we're not actually creating enough jobs for all the new residents coming when you start to look at the type of jobs that are being created in Alberta finance and insurance all the services are seeing the biggest increase it's a little bit of a lower bar lower entry level for a lot of those professions and it's easier to do part-time so we're seeing a pretty big increase of people going into their manufacturing health care and social assistance is also creating jobs in Alberta which is great agricultural actually pretty depressing to be honest with you is the largest decrease in employment would love to see some provincial government intervention into that to spur up some sort of agricultural growth I need to actually look into this in a lot more detail Alberta oil and gas is seeing higher and higher outputs yes a lot of people don't like oil and gas we want to phase away from it but at the same time if we don't want to see any sort of market crashes you know this is actually going to help the Alberta economy the startup of the trans mountain expansion is obviously to to play here there will be an interestingly enough there will be some sort of constraints once it fills because Alberta just loves to pump their oil and then the tariffs right we need to also realize that there could be some potential tariffs come to the Alberta market which will definitely shake up a lot of things now on a lighter note we are seeing a lot more oil production going to Asia which is great we went from effectively zero to about 515 million between June and October which is great so I mean yes we're starting to diversify which is great for our economy but it's definitely one of those things that we want to keep an eye out for so all of these articles are linked in the description all of the things to do is something that we do every couple of months these is also linked in the description if you're looking for things to do around Calgary this is absolutely fantastic so like mentioned my name is Adam Fyfe thank you very much for everyone who's actually watched these videos and subscribed and commented go ahead and ask your questions I'm more than happy to take the time here and reply to everything that I can and provide your information right like I'm asking about like agricultural stuff go ahead and like comment some stuff you know send me some websites send me some charts send me some graphs and forms and all that stuff because I find that stuff super interesting if I'm going to bring it to you you might as well be the one who provides the information to me so thank you very much you have yourself a lovely day I'll see you soon