The weather outside may be frightful but it hasn’t had an impact on December’s residential real estate market in Calgary as sales continue to outpace last year’s numbers.

In fact, despite recent winter storms, with their dropping temperatures and dumps of snow, sales in the city are actually higher than new listings this month making it a strong sellers’ market right now.

Bryon Howard, realtor with RE/MAX House of Real Estate in Calgary, said the city’s real estate market currently is characterized by a lack of inventory and good demand.

“We’re seeing multiple offers. Anything that’s priced well is selling,” he said. “The market’s great.

“I think for certain you’ll see prices move up this month.”

According to the Calgary Real Estate Board, total MLS sales in the city so far this month, up until Thursday, were 546 transactions, up 14.95 per cent from the same period a year ago. New listings of 511 are up by 1.19 per cent. Active listings of 2,865 are down 18.77 per cent.

The tight market has pushed sale prices higher this month than a year ago. The median price of $406,000 is up by 7.98 per cent while the average sale price has risen by 0.91 per cent to $457,758.

“We’re in a strong seller’s market,” said Howard. “We have no reason to think that’s going to change based on everything we know in terms of in-migration to the province and Alberta (economic) forecasts. It shouldn’t change too much.”

Howard said that while many people think nothing happens in real estate in the month of December he’s always felt it was a good month to sell.

According to CREB, the last time the city has had more sales than listings was December 2012. Before that, it was 2006. Right now, it’s looking like this December will be the 12th time since 1990 when sales eclipse new listings and seven of those have been in December.

The highest-ever sales-to-new-listing ratio was December 2005 with 1.299 sales for every listing. This year it’s sitting in fourth overall at 1.140.

So far this year, November has had the highest sales-to-new-listings ratio at 0.95.

The record for the average MLS sale price in December was set last year at $436,899 when there were 1,082 transactions for the month.

The record for total MLS sales during December was set in 2006 at 1,718 transactions.

 

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