If you’ve been priced out of Toronto’s real estate market, Alberta hopes its latest ploy will have you looking west to achieve your white-picket-fence dreams.
In a move to lure fed-up prospective home buyers, theprovince has unveiled the second phase of its campaign dubbed “Alberta is Calling.”
“We’ve got Canada’s lowest taxes and the lowest cost of living, plus the highest wages and incomes and lots of big opportunity,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said in a video on Twitter.
The campaign touts slightly higher weekly earnings in Alberta over those in Ontario, averaging $1,245 to $1,186, respectively.
While the average income is comparable, there’s a significant difference when it comes to real estate. According to Kenney, the average cost for a detached home is $490,000 in Edmonton and $700,000 in Calgary — in Toronto it’s $1.4 million.
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Figures like those are what enticed Yash Chauhan to uproot his life in Toronto.
“I moved to Canada three years ago, and given the extremely high rents in Toronto and then how real estate prices moved up during the pandemic — obviously everyone wants to own a house — Calgary seemed like a good idea,” he told CBC Toronto.
In February, after pre-purchasing a home in Calgary, Chauhan packed up his Toronto apartment, put all his belongings into his car, and drove west.
“Initially I moved here as an experiment,” he said. “It was an impulse move.”
But after just a few days, Chauhan said he knew he wanted to stay.
Ontario offers more job variety, experts say
In return for the “many cost-of-living, career and lifestyle advantages of life in Alberta,” the province hopes people like Chauhan will fill some of its 100,000 job vacancies — a shortage it says is restricting 78 per cent of Alberta businesses from meeting demand.
Despite that shortage, the province says it has still seen the largest employment growth in the country so far in 2022. Between December 2021 and August 2022, employment in Alberta increased by 61,700 compared with an increase of 28,600 in Ontario, despite it having a larger population.
But some experts say finding work in lesser populated cities like Calgary and Edmonton isn’t so simple.
In its campaign dubbed ‘Alberta is Calling,’ the province touts its high average wages, low taxes, ‘unprecedented economic growth,’ and affordable housing market. (Government of Alberta)
“Some of the other factors that are much bigger than the housing costs are job opportunities,” said Rotman School of Management professor emeritus Anil Verma.
Verma argues that Alberta’s economy — and therefore job opportunities — is largely restricted to oil, gas and other extractive industries like mining.
“Ontario has much of the same but it’s much more broad in scope,” she said.
“So for dual career couples or families, there’s a greater chance you’d find something in the GTA than in Alberta.”
‘It’s just easier here’
As for Chauhan, his move out west has worked out so far.
“It’s just easier here because I’m paying the same amount — my mortgage is basically the same as my rent in Toronto,” he said.
“So I’m building equity, I’m not just paying all that money in rent.”
Alberta’s nature, Chauhan says, is just an added perk.
“When I get out of my home … I can see the mountains in two minutes,” he said.
“What I imagined — it turned out to be way more beautiful than that.”
Located in Alberta, Peyto Lake is a glacier-fed lake in Banff National Park. Yash Chauhan says the province’s beautiful scenery helped him decide to pack up his Toronto apartment and move further west. (Submitted by Yash Chauhan )
He’s encouraging others to follow in his footsteps.
“If you want to live a rich life and maybe die poor and if you want to live poor and die rich, you should probably stay in Toronto.”
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
