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EDMONTON – By the end of the year, Edmonton could get something it hasn’t seen for several years — a “normalized” housing market — as homes for sale dry up and prices drop . $ x u, a- x5 ^- P8 J2 L: y2 w! m
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That’s the forecast contained in the House Price Survey and Market Survey Forecast released Thursday by Royal LePage Real Estate Services. : n5 e: d9 W% w8 |& `' F5 E0 Y4 W
& g3 [7 {+ w3 Z# ~$ EA soaring number of homes put on the market especially by builders and speculators in the last year softened the city’s housing market during the second quarter, the report said.
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“The high inventory levels will dwindle into the second half of the year, and as affordability improves, subsequent market conditions will continue to normalize,” the report said.
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! z8 v# v2 `% r$ C; ]: @0 hAs of the end of Wednesday, there were 11,184 homes for sale on the Multiple Listing Service, according to the Realtors’ Association of Edmonton.
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But Alberta’s two biggest cities still boast some of the most expensive real estate in the country, it noted.
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/ W7 {0 ?6 a1 p“Despite some mild price erosion during the second quarter in both Calgary and Edmonton, these markets remain strong. Although prices have come down from where they were last year — one of the best years on record — current house prices are far higher than they were three years ago before energy-rich Alberta experienced its boom.”
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& N+ i/ w- q; j9 g+ R0 V, o) l* `( ]The average price for a detached bungalow in Edmonton in April, May and June was $320,000, down about 14.5 per cent from the same period in 2007 ($374,143), Royal LePage said in its survey of Canadian house prices. + X8 ]/ t/ i5 x5 J) S/ W' x% ` Z
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In the second quarter of 2008, a two-storey house in Edmonton sold for an average price of $348,571, down 12.4 per cent year-over-year from $397,857.
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An average condominium in Edmonton was priced at $226,000, down 14.2 per cent from $263,333 in the comparable 2007 period.
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“A surge in inventory caused Alberta’s white-hot market to record the country’s only major-market price decreases,” the report said.
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Across most of the country, average house prices rose, but more slowly than the spikes seen in 2006 and 2007. 0 t( n( _9 v. O
# y: k, K8 B, q7 B; yRoyal LePage forecasts the national average house price to rise by 3.5 per cent, to $318,000 by year’s end. ) z, d' @5 l6 c2 d. W0 Z
" J, i% ]* g" V- d, [* KThe report predicts home sale transactions to decrease by 11.5 per cent to 461,000 unit sales by year’s end. |
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