By Shaun Penner

Real Estate

First quarter home sales off to slower start than 2018

Apr 24, 2019 | 7:00 AM

First quarter home sales in Grande Prairie and in the County saw a minor drop compared to the same time last year.

Sales in the city dropped to a total of 259 through the first 3 months of 2019, 83 less than in 2018 (or a decrease of nearly 25%). The County saw sales drop to a total of 101, a decrease of 24 sales from that same time frame last year.

Realtor Brent North says there are several factors that led to the decline in sales.

“The actual low temperatures that we had during January and February, that cold snap slowed things down quite a bit,” said North. “The other thing is going into an election year, we’re always careful to make any big moves until we know who is going to be governing us quite often. So, I think those two slowed us down a little bit.”

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With the provincial election now in the past and the United Conservatives set to take power in the coming days, North has a lot of confidence that the change in government can kick start the economy, which in turn would boost housing sales once again.

“There’s other factors such as the new hospital being finished, as well as the methanol plant coming in south of Grande Prairie, have some big positive impacts on our area.”

Though sales numbers themselves are down, the average sale price of homes in the Swan City went up by 3.8% during the first three months of 2019. North details that a lack of supply on the market has been a leading contributor to prices going up, and even influencing the number of sales.

According to the Canadian Real Estate Association, Grande Prairie’s real estate market has been fairly resilient during the economic downturn, when compared to the rest of Alberta. The year 2018 as a whole saw both sales and prices jump in the Swan City, seeing a 17% increase from 2017. CREA notes the issue in other parts of the province, in terms of prices, is the large amount of supply that is greater than the demand.