Resilient Real Estate: Why Alberta Continues to Outperform Canada

Resilient Real Estate: Why Alberta Continues to Outperform Canada | Edmonton Real Estate Market Update (Episode #23)

Is Alberta's real estate market built differently than the rest of Canada?

While headlines continue to warn about a possible Canadian recession, slowing population growth, and uncertainty across the country, Alberta continues to tell a very different story.

In this special episode of Real Estate in Edmonton, we're taking you inside Mogul Mastermind—Edmonton's premier real estate investing community—where award-winning broadcaster Tracie Gray emcees the evening and REALTOR® Devin Gray delivers his full June Edmonton Real Estate Market Update.

If you're buying, selling, investing, or simply trying to understand where the Edmonton housing market is heading, this episode is packed with valuable local insights backed by current market data.

In this episode we cover:

🏡 Why Alberta continues to outperform much of Canada despite recession concerns

📈 The latest Edmonton real estate statistics, including inventory, home prices, sales activity and days on market

⚖️ Why today's Edmonton market feels "weird"—and what a balanced market really means for buyers and sellers

💰 Interest rates, inflation and what the Bank of Canada's next move could mean for homeowners and investors

👥 Alberta's population growth, interprovincial migration and why people continue moving to Edmonton

🏘️ Rental market trends, affordability and where investors should be paying attention

💎 Edmonton's growing luxury real estate market and surprising opportunities across the city

⚡ Alberta's economy, energy sector, employment trends and why resilience continues to separate Alberta from the rest of Canada

You'll also get an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the Mogul Mastermind, where Edmonton's top real estate investors, industry professionals, lawyers and entrepreneurs share practical strategies on:

• Edmonton investment opportunities
• Rent-to-own investing
• Creative financing strategies
• Vendor Take Back Mortgages (VTBs)
• Agreements for Sale
• Building long-term wealth through Alberta real estate

Whether you're:

✔️ Buying your first home

✔️ Selling your current property

✔️ Looking for your next investment property

✔️ Growing a rental portfolio

✔️ Curious about the Alberta economy

✔️ Wondering if now is the right time to buy or invest...

...this episode will help you better understand what's really happening in the Edmonton real estate market.

🎙️ Subscribe to Real Estate in Edmonton for new weekly episodes covering:

• Edmonton Real Estate
• Alberta Housing Market
• Edmonton Investment Properties
• Real Estate Investing
• Market Updates
• Neighbourhood Tours
• Renovation Tips
• Buying & Selling Advice
• Interviews with Local Experts

👍 If you enjoyed this episode, please Like, Subscribe and leave us a comment. We'd love to hear your thoughts on where you think the Edmonton market is headed next!

#EdmontonRealEstate #EdmontonHousingMarket #AlbertaRealEstate #CanadianRealEstate #RealEstateInvesting #EdmontonInvestor #HousingMarket #EdmontonRealtor #AlbertaEconomy #InvestmentProperty #RentalProperty #InterestRates #BankOfCanada #MogulMastermind #RealEstatePodcast #RealEstateInEdmonton

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is Real Estate in Edmonton, hoping you navigate by selling, investing, and living in Edmonton, hosted by realtor Devin Gray and professional broadcaster Tracy Gray.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Hi, I'm Tracy, and welcome back to Real Estate in Edmonton, where we talk real estate and real life. This podcast is a little bit different today because we are going to take you inside Mogul Mastermind. And that's why I'm wearing a Mogals hat right now because Mogul Realty Group, which is the company that started up Mogul Mastermind, has a group of women working with the company that we call ourselves the Mogals. Now, the guys want to do the same thing, but Mogais just sounds like the lunch special at Oodle Noodles. So we have to come up with a better name for them. And in the meantime, we are going to take you inside Mogul Mastermind. It's a monthly meeting where we talk about real estate investing. Also, it's Edmonton's premier real estate investing community who's a part of this. Last night, I had the pleasure of MCing another fantastic event with real estate investors joining us both in person and online. We had an incredible lineup of speakers covering everything from Edmonton investment opportunities, rent-to-own strategies, and creative financing with experienced real estate lawyers. Now, one of the highlights every month is Devin Gray's Edmonton market update. And it's not just me being biased because he's my husband, but there are people who come to Mobile Mastermind every month specifically just to hear his report, and we've got it here for you now. Now, headlines are talking about a possible Canadian recession. Devin explains why Alberta's economy is still more resilient and what that could mean for buyers, sellers, and investors. So let's head to Mobile Mastermind. First, you'll see a quick clip of me hosting the evening, followed by Devin's full June Edmonton real estate market update.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Here we go. So uh welcome to the sunshine, welcome to Mobile Mastermind.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

I'm Tracy Gray, and um for those of you just joining us here online and in person, we are so glad that you guys are here. Hello to everybody who's online. Um I'm on the radio and TV. I'm also co-host of the Real Estate at Edmonton podcast, a real estate investor, and uh most importantly, tonight I'm your host, an MC for Mobile Mastermind. So thank you again for joining. Oh, thank you. I did a little curtsy. Oh no, stop, no, no more. No, really, I no, no, no. I didn't hear from you in the back. No, I'm just kidding.

unknown 3:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

All right. Uh so to get into our evening here, if uh you were wondering how I got involved in uh mogul reality group and mogul mastermind, uh, I am a real estate investor and I also married a realtor, which apparently is the gateway drug into doing real estate investing.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

So if you wanted to know what causes that, now you know.

SPEAKER_03 3:33

So uh I'm here to handle the June market update for the Edmonton and uh greater Edmonton areas. So if you do check out the Realtors Association of Edmonton, you'll find a graph like this. Um the information does come out on the first couple of days of the following month. So we probably will see June's information on July 2nd or July 3rd. But uh this is the most uh current information we have right now, which is the May stats. Uh key indicators. Well, first off, I wanted to say so, a lot of realtors, um, myself included, we like to update uh market updates and various things like that, and we'll talk about uh how we think the market is. And so I was watching another realtor who used an interesting word to describe the Edmonton Spring market. He called it weird. And initially I thought, well, that's not really professional, but then I thought more and more, and I thought, you know, it is kind of weird. Um, but weird and lots of people disappointed and confused and stuff like that. And I think a lot of times that's just the that can be encapsulated in basically saying that we're more or less in a balanced market. Because as I was also saying to Brandon back there uh from Bar LLP, balanced markets are when everybody's disappointed. When you have a seller's market, you clearly have happy sellers, but disappointed buyers. Conversely, you have disappointed uh sellers in a buyer's market, but everybody's kind of not really sure what's going on. Um, certainly at the mobile team, we're experiencing and being involved with some overlist prices, multiple bids. I've been in two in the last week, but we've also got properties that are sitting there and we're doing significant price drops, and we just can't capture the imagination of the buyers. And then on the other hand, too, we were running into sellers on the buying side, we're running into sellers that are very firm on their price, and other sellers that are just really anxious, and you throw in a lowball offer and you're kind of surprised at what they come back with. So I thought weird was a good uh good description for the Edmondson market right now. In regards to the actual stats and what MLS is saying, so um for total sales, we are up slightly from April, but we're definitely down from last year, and we really started to see the apex of the Edmonton market from a seller's standpoint, seller's market standpoint last spring, and then things started to slow down. Overall, inventory is also up from last month and also last year. Uh, from most of the spring, now again, the uh Realtors Association of Edmonton will talk about three months of supply as basically being roughly a balanced market. And through the first part of the spring, we were definitely underneath three months of inventory. As you can see on this graph, we now just bumped up a little bit above three months of inventory. We're at 3.1. New listings are also up big time from April and uh about the same as last May. And inventory again uh is rising sharply year over year. We're at 24% higher. So it's definitely more of a balanced market, certainly a little slower than it was last year. Uh pricing and days on market, um, all residential average prices are at about 492,000. Single family homes popped up over $600,000 as an average, so push in $605. Um, all residential days on market about 36 days, uh, single detached 33 days. And then you can see the apartment style condos, uh, which always are the lagging um uh style of property in pretty much every market. They're sitting at 49 days on market. Uh so a little bit of uh uh every every month the the Ray board chair will talk about um you know, just providing some information in regards to what's going on in the market and basically just again talking about how uh there is more inventory, more choice for buyers. Um so sellers really need to be a lot sharper in regards to um how they prepare their homes. Um, you can't keep that Tim Hortons cup on the kitchen table while your photographer is going around. You actually got to do some cleaning, uh, maybe stage the property, make sure you do some minor renovations. Um and uh great selection for buyers. So that's basically what she's saying there. Uh home price index, a great tool for realtors, uh for any client uh that's willing to uh uh take some time to look at this. Uh year over year, for um this is for the composite. So basically all types and styles of property in both Edmonton and the greater Edmonton area. Uh they're down ever so slightly, 1.8%. You can see how um things slowed down last fall, and then we got into the typical spring pull-up, and now we're starting to see things leveling out as we move into the slightly slower uh summer months. This is taking a look at the last two years, uh, over the past two years, uh prices are up 6% from 2024. And then if we look at three years ago, prices are up 15%. So for people that decided to hang on to their properties for the last couple years and maybe look at selling, yes, it might seem in this current spring market to be a little bit more challenging, but prices still are quite elevated from where they were three years ago. And if we look at single family homes, basically we are flat. We are flat of where single family homes, again, this is composite. This is our sorry, this is single families, but across the entire city of Edmonton and the greater Edmonton area. Um basically, we kind of apexed in June of last year, and we're at that uh at that price now again for single family homes as we start to move into the leveled off summer. Uh, we do always like to look at Calgary stats. Um, Calgary is the economic juggernaut. Edmonton follows Calgary. Um, Calgary really is a bit of a tale of two different types and styles of properties. Uh, they're still very much in a seller's market when it comes to single family homes, but they have an abundance of row houses and apartment style condos. And that's causing, um, depending on uh on the purchaser, um, it's either still a very competitive market for a buyer. Um, sellers are happy with prices that are being sold. Uh, and then on the the apartment style condo side, um, it's definitely a buyer's opportunity there. So, this is from the uh chief chief economist of the Calgary Real Estate Board. Shift in supply is being felt in the market, more supply choice in the new and rental markets, created more competitive environment for potential buyers. Um, still dealing with um uh the the reduction in immigration that's really has affected um, you know, you turn the taps off from a million people a year down to 350,000 to 400,000. Every single market across the country is going to feel that, and that would include Calgary. Um looking at inflation, so inflation jumped higher than uh was anticipated. Um, it's back up to 3.2. Obviously, that's being led by energy prices. Um, energy surged 32%, also up is air travel, obviously, because they run on fuel. And food costs also climbed because food needs transportation to get that to market. So everything again centers back to uh what's going on around the world with high energy prices. Alberta inflation uh really shot up to 3.7, that's up to from 3.2, and of course, uh that's energy is the primary culprit. Uh gross domestic products. So, of course, of course, there's been uh a lot of discussion about Canada falling into a recession, uh, which is two negative growth quarters. Um, so what they are uh uh predicting for the rest of the year in Canada is point uh 0.8% growth, whereas Alberta is still a robust 2.6%. Uh Bank of Canada did hell did hold their um interest rate to at 2.25%. Um they're obviously watching the market very closely and we'll see what happens. Um, you know, as a couple of wise people told me, um, sometimes not making a decision on something never hurt you. So I'm sure the Bank of Canada is probably thinking that. That well, we'll just kind of keep holding pat here and kind of wait to see what happens. Uh, employment update. National employment did fall to 6.6%, a surprising 88,000 new jobs. Um, they weren't expecting that as well. Construction led the led the way with the most gains. Um, and also some encouraging news because there's a lot of people watching youth unemployment. So, youth unemployment, while still high, it did drop to 13.4%. The labor markets, provincial unemployment also at 6.6%. Um, Edmonton is at 7.1%, and Calgary is at 7%. And of course, that's an interesting both sides of the story in terms of if you're somebody looking for work, um, there's potentially not a lot of jobs out there. Conversely, um, if you talk to a business owner, they actually love this type of market because they can pick they can pick the best of the best. They can take their time and really, really dial in. They're gonna get a lot of applicants. Um, for those of you that know Patrick Franci from the Real Estate Investment Network, um, I remember him talking about this a lot during tight labor markets where there's not a lot of uh people looking for work. Um the the the mindset was do they have a pulse? Then we'll hire them and we'll figure out how good they are uh once they actually start working. So um it's actually depending on how you look at it with unemployment, um, obviously there is some concern, but on the other hand, um it can be looked at as a little bit of a good thing, provided it doesn't go up any higher. Um the next few slides, it's just an interesting I found this interesting in regards to, you know, so who's working, how much are they making, and and where is the uh the employment growth? And so this first slide just talks about um so who's making what and and what's the highest uh paying um occupations. So mining quarry in the energy sector is the highest in Canada, making $2,500 a week. Uh next is utilities, then you drop down to information and cultural studies, professional, scientific, and tech just making just under 2,000 uh finance insurance. Now, food services, I think there should be an asterisk there because this obviously doesn't take into account all the tips they make. But clearly from a wage standpoint, um they basically are are bringing up the rear. Um when it comes to where people make the most amount of money, this seems impressive. However, I also know we all should know that um it's it's very expensive to live in the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut. So these salaries are more or less a necessity because of how expensive it is to live there. But Alberta is number four, and out of the actual provinces, Alberta basically is number one. Not surprisingly, Ontario and BC are coming in second and third behind Alberta. So Alberta continues to be out of the top, or out of the 10 provinces, continues to be the highest uh weekly wage earners. Uh, sector momentum. So, what sectors are growing and what sectors are declining? Um, administration and support services. There's a rising demand for business services as the economy grows. Also, waste management and remediation services. For anybody that knows, as any who's here is uh demoed a house and had to deal with um um asbestos? Yeah, that you talk about how much is that like that's a license to print money? That's criminal. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if the mob's in it. I mean, like who cares about drugs and prostitution? Let's get into remediation. That's right, that's right. Anyways, um, two sectors declining. Um their service industry and arts, entertainment, and recreation. Obviously, with this, you know, these people's discretionary income is reducing, and so less people are going out, they're watching their pennies, and so it's becoming harder and harder to keep a job in that sector. Uh the pendulum swings. Canada's population shrinks again. This is uh was at one time a pretty uh wild, unique anomaly, and now it's becoming a regular situation. Canada's population is is shrinking, and this is the first time in the history of the country that we are seeing a declining population. So in the third for the third consecutive quarter, and basically from January to April, we saw 55,000 more residents leave the country. Um so year over year a contraction of 0.5%, as opposed to a 3% growth in 2024, we saw 1.2 million residents come to Canada. So it's that's quite interesting. However, the only province in the country that continues to grow, we're living in it. Um in 2026 alone, we added nearly 9,000 people. Um Alberta's population projected at 1.1% growth along with that 2.6% GDP growth. So it feels slower here, obviously, compared to the last couple of years, but we still have growth, and that's hugely important. Um, and then here's just an easier way to look at it. You can see we're basically over the past year, Canada has has seen 188,000 people leave the country. Um, the biggest uh loss is Ontario, biggest growth is Alberta. You've got uh the Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan and Alberta, that more or less are basically flat. Uh so Saskatchewan, yeah, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territory, no, sorry, Prince Edward Island. Um, and then on top of that, interprovincial migration. Um, so uh we are still seeing people moving here from other provinces, and um, so we are at 6,000 people from other provinces, and the largest um exodus is Ontario, second is Quebec, and then you also actually surprisingly you saw a little bit of growth in BC because BC is also looking at uh a lot of uh overall population decline. The energy workforce. So a lot of people wonder like, well, how big is the energy uh industry in Alberta? You know, how many people work in oil and gas? Well, there's 161,000 people that work in Alberta. More impressive, that's 52% of everybody in any energy sector in Canada. The next high is Ontario, but that's with electrical power. Um, a couple of little other um interesting notes: 75% of that workforce is male, and 95% are full-time positions. So it just shows you, you know, this isn't you know casual work, it's not part-time, like this is a major, major industry for Alberta and uh and vitally important for us. Um, the biggest uh potential disruptor, as with uh pretty much any industry, is artificial intelligence. Um, and that quietly continues to be something that not, despite the fact that everybody knows now what ChatGPT and uh and and Claude or Claude, if you're from the East, um, likes to talk about. They it's artificial intelligence is really something that every industry needs to keep an eye on. Uh Alberta economic expansion. So um, you know, how is Alberta doing when it comes to working with the US? Well, uh, we've seen non-US exports surge by 22%, and that's offsetting a 6.1% decline in US bound exports, 52% increase in energy exports to international markets. So we definitely are, you know, I mean, obviously we're having our current challenges with the United States, but um we are a resilient population and we're gonna go and find uh customers elsewhere. And this this uh this information certainly shows that uh um a lot of uh energy companies are being successful uh in Alberta. Uh the luxury market is bouncing back, but not where you think. I'm sure that you would probably think Vancouver and Toronto are leading the way as they always do with the luxury market. Not so. That's actually in decline. In fact, the largest decline in the luxury market is in Hamilton. It's dropped 21%. Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Ottawa each grew their luxury markets by over 10%. Luxury in Edmonton is defined as any property that is $1.5 million or above. And then the first four months, we saw 65 sales in Edmonton. Um, I'm sure Barr handled all of those. Um nearly 48% growth year over year. Saskatoon, $900,000. Um, and so I've got a slide in a little bit here, kind of reinforcing what's happening here. But in the first, uh, before we get to that, um, you know, a lot of people understand and know what's going on with uh the challenges that the downtown have. But I thought this was an interesting slide in the fact that um in the downtown, from downtown to basically 1124th Street, there's 5,500 businesses employing 144,000 people in the downtown core. That is far and away the most concentrated amount of employment. So when we talk about the importance of downtowns in any city, and especially downtown in Edmonton, and people talking about, oh, downtown is dead and nobody's going there or anything like that. This says that there is a lot of stuff going on. And how many people potentially, as we also are understanding about how high gas prices and various things like that, how many renters that work at these 5,500 businesses, how many would potentially like to live in a rental somewhere close to downtown? So something to keep an eye on and keep a keep uh uh or just keep in mind when you're shopping for rentals. Um, when it comes to uh uh the downtown core, we talked about you know highest concentration. Um, if you are focused on a renter that uh is more in the industrial sector, uh Cal uh Jasper Place, and obviously the Southeast Industrial Parks are probably the best places to focus on. When it comes to retail, old Scona and West Edmonton Mall, obviously serving the um entertainment and events and stuff like that. Um I we talked about luxury, and so this is an interesting thing that's going on in the uh old Glenora area. There is a um a high-rise being built, all luxury uh apartments or condos. The the lowest, the cheapest is um 2.7 million, the highest is 9.5 million. It's an $80 million project. Um I believe it's supposed to be done in 2020, yeah, 2028. Uh the penthouse is already sold, there's already six units remaining. The the uh I believe it's uh oh yeah, it's autographed, it's behind this. And they felt that that um we were lacking in the luxury condo market. And um they're extremely happy with how sales are going. This and um success follows success. So we wonder whether or not there's going to be more luxury condos being built in and around the downtown core. Uh looking at the rentals again from rentals.ca, if you own rental properties and you don't go to this website, I recommend you do because it's got some great information. Uh, most are down year over year, Edmonton 2.6, Calgary 4.4, Halifax is up, and Winnipeg is up, obviously, because renters are chasing affordability. Um, you know, the less expensive real estate markets, um, that's where they're gonna go. Um, average asking price, you can still see Alberta is below the average. Uh Nova Scotia has actually overtaken BC. I thought that was interesting. Um annual change. So a great slide that I always like to point out. So, as you can see, that we are are down uh in Alberta over the three-year average, uh, we're still up 8.9%. But you can see Saskatchewan, which is also starting to cool. That had a huge uh growth increase, and then same with Nova Scotia over the course of the past three years. Uh, six largest markets, Edmonton, um, and this is the three-year average. Edmonton is the only one at 10.9%. You can see the rest are down. Calgary, three-year average, six percent, Toronto 10, or sorry, 11, uh, Vancouver at 14% down. Uh, highest average asking rents. Um, I bring this slide up all the time just to again show why people continue to move here. It's because of affordability. These are the top 25 markets outside the six largest markets, like you know, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary. There's not a single Alberta town on this slide. It's only BC, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia that make up the highest uh average rents. However, you have Fort McMurray, Lloyd Minster, Medicine Hatton, Red Deer leading the lowest average asking rents. Also Grand Prairie, Lethbridge, Airdrie, and St. Albert. So again, why do people continue to be moving to Alberta? There is a lot of inexpensive opportunities to take out a rental property if you are a tenant. And the fastest growing rents, um, Kingston for the first time in about a year has dropped to number two, but you've got Lloyd Minster on here. Um, I've actually had quite a few conversations with people about Lloyd Minster. Lloyd Minster has very low average rents, yet uh asking rents are continuing to surge ahead, and there is a lot of things uh going on in Lloyd Minster. That's certainly a city to watch. So, some key takeaways. Um, inflation inflation risk, it's elevated, it's gonna be continuing to be a challenge, especially as the war in Iran continues on. Uh, a rental correction is ongoing. Rents have declined for 20 straight months in Canada. Um, and uh we had some good conversations about where rent's going uh before we started here. Um, Alberta's continued resilience. If you're gonna be any place in Canada, Alberta is the place to be. Hopefully, all the slides and information I showed you here shows that. And then the bank of policy uh continues to be uncertain. Um, they're gonna be watching things, they seem to be getting attacked on both sides. It's gonna be interesting to see what happens uh on that situation with the Bank of Canada interest rates, um, along with being affected by everything going on in the world. So, as Tracy mentioned from the outside, her uh outset, uh her and I host a podcast that drops every Thursday at three o'clock. You can catch it on YouTube and Spotify and anywhere you catch your podcast. It's called Real Estate in Edmonton, where we talk real estate in real life. So please check that out. And I really appreciate your time. Thanks very much and enjoy the rest of the evening.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Devin Gray.

unknown 25:33

Woohoo.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Okay, I hope you enjoyed this special look inside mobile mastermind and found Devin's June market update to be valuable to you. As you saw, that was just one part of an incredible evening. We also heard from Adrian Nedlack on a great investment opportunity in Edmonton, Mitch Peterson, who was talking about rent to own and how it can create opportunities for both investors and home buyers, and Brandon Kay Hands and Richard Bell from Bar LLP, who shared their legal insights on creative financing strategies like vendor takebacks and agreements for sale. We actually had a third lawyer that was lined up to speak, but he just quit law to become a dog breeder. Turns out he preferred boxers over briefs. Okay. I promise their real estate advice is better than my jokes. But the full event is available, bad jokes and all, inside our mogul mastermind school community, which is spelled S-K-O-O-L, and it's free to sign up. If you'd like to learn from experienced investors, stay on top of Edmonton's market and connect with an amazing community. We'd love to have you join us. We meet on the last Wednesday of every month, both in person here in Edmonton, and you can connect from anywhere online. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and share it with someone who wants to stay ahead of what's happening in Edmonton Real Estate. Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you next time on real estate at Edmonton, where we talk real estate and real life. I'm Tracy, that's Devin. See you next time.