STATS ARE A FUNNY THING
Statistics can point out the obvious! Often stats are old news as soon as they’re released. But stats, numbers and especially trends are all still relevant in the world of real estate investing. And some of you LOVE them—you know who you are! So here’s a quick rundown of the stats as they relate to real estate investing in Calgary, and Alberta. And no, this is definitely not a complete list: just a quick snapshot. If numbers aren’t your thing, we’ll see you next week!
GDP in 2013/2014 was crazy—let’s stop looking backwards that far. Alberta’s GDP was 2.3% in 2018. Compare this to Canada’s GDP of 2.0% in 2018. What’s next? GDP is predicted to be around 0.8% for Alberta for 2019 (depends on who you follow right now); best predictions for 2020 are 2.0%. And yes, this does depend on the elephant in the room: pipeline progress. Canada’s economy is predicted to grow 1.5% in 2020 (also depends on who’s talking). But here’s a crazy number, Alberta’s GDP per person was the highest in Canada in 2018! Stats can do the craziest things, eh?!
Let’s look at jobs; and yes we recognize this is not in any way an overall analysis—just a snapshot. Alberta’s unemployment rate was 6.7% in October, largely unchanged from Sept. Canada’s overall unemployment was 5.5% for both September and October. And Calgary’s unemployment sits at 7.2% for October, largely unchanged from Sept. We recognize these numbers are not ideal, but wow, are they every better than when unemployment was over 10%. And here’s a cool number: did you know that roughly 13.5% of all of Canada’s small businesses are in Alberta! (including all 3 territories).
Under the strange-but-true category, Alberta’s weekly earnings are still the highest in the country. Sure doesn’t feel that way, does it? Average August weekly earnings were $1163, an increase of 1.3% from August of 2018. Nationally, the average was $1032, up 3.1% from 2018.
How about population numbers? The median age in Calgary is a spry 37.1 years—still the youngest major city of all the provinces. And Calgary’s population grew 1.4% from 2018 to 2019, largely due to migration. In Canada, the population grew by the highest rate ever recorded by Stats Canada: 1.4%, which translates to roughly 500,000 people. Huh, Calgary is growing on par with the country? That’s what the stats show!
So what’s the impact on the rental market? CMHC’s fall report is not yet released—stay tuned! CMHC will have the best data for vacancy rates—although the numbers will be roughly 6 months old by the time the report is released. Rentals.ca shows median rent prices in Calgary peaking in Q2, but falling slightly into Q3. Padmapper shows year over year declines in rent prices in the city overall, by 2.6% to 5.5%, depending on the number of bedrooms. All sources report a wide variation in rental markets across the country. Interestingly, we receive anecdotal reports that rents in different Calgary markets have a wide range these days too.
And a snapshot of the housing market? Benchmark price overall in Calgary continues to decline at $425, 533. Our colleagues in Vancouver and Toronto are astonished by these numbers! We can get affordability that those cities haven’t dreamed of in more than a decade! Also important is that the months of supply in Calgary are down to 4.6 months, and Days on Market continue to have an overall trend down to 56.
Today’s post was a nod to our numbers-geeks. Any engineers out there? Many of you will notice how the numbers paint a different picture when compared to the overall “feel” in Calgary and Alberta. Next week brings us back to the bigger picture of Financial Freedom through real estate investing.
