If you are looking to buy in Canada, the market is still in a white hot mode out near the oil fields of Edmonton and Calgary. The combination of a shortage of labor and housing is driving up housing costs at an astounding rate. With oil over 60 dollars a barrel, the producers can afford to pay top dollar for labor and that is creating a housing boom that has not been seen in years up in the Great White North.

“Housing prices have not yet peaked,” Carolyn Pratt, president of the Edmonton Real Estate Board, said Wednesday, releasing the March figures for sales through the Multiple Listing Service.
Edmonton-area prices averaged $398,476 for single-family homes and $325,339 for all housing forms. In only the first three months of this year, average house prices have climbed 16.5 per cent, surpassing Pratt’s original forecast of a 15-per-cent rise for the full year.

“We’re predicting that prices will continue to rise until August, at four to five per cent per month, then at two per cent per month,” she now says, citing Edmonton’s continuing in-migration, strong demand, low inventory and prices that still are below Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary. Averages for single-family homes ranged from $501,838 in southwest Edmonton and $484,168 in St. Albert to $320,600 in Morinville, $312,730 in northeast Edmonton and $281,480 in central Edmonton. via the Edmonton Journal

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