Trend to work from home cited as real estate takes off in Cochrane, Airdrie – Calgary Herald

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Norma and Alan Kehoe said leaving the beauty and friendships of Cape Breton wasn’t easy.

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But living near grandchildren in Cochrane was a strong enough pull to make the move west and purchase a home in the Fireside area of the town just west of Calgary.

“We love Cochrane. We love the closeness to the mountains and to the city without having to be in it,” said Alan Kehoe.

“(Cochrane is) an older community but it’s growing quickly.”

The couple, who take possession of their 1,430-square-foot house next month, are among the home buyers driving a real estate boom in towns and cities surrounding Calgary.

According to new data from the Calgary Real Estate Board (CREB), the 725 home sales in the first six months of the year in Cochrane nearly equal the record 754 purchases in the entire record year of 2014.

Much the same can be said for Airdrie to the north of Calgary, where the annual average number of home sales — 1,300 — has already been exceeded.

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The benchmark price for a single detached home in Airdrie was $432,700 in June, 15 per cent higher than the previous year.

But the average price of a detached home in Airdrie so far this year is $411,011, well below the $500,183 in Calgary, according to CREB.

“My record sales in previous years were surpassed by May this year,” said Natalie Bethiaume of CIR Realty, who specializes in Airdrie.

Lower lot prices are a draw for buyers, she said, in the city that’s nearly doubled in size since 2009 to a population of more than 70,000.

“None of us saw this market coming. When COVID-19 really became a concern, all the predictions were this market was going to tank, but the opposite happened,” said Berthiaume.

The COVID-inspired trend to work from home has made places such as Airdrie more attractive, she said.

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Echoing that is Cochrane CIR realtor Kendra Watt, whose town’s population has grown by 30 per cent in the past five years to more than 34,000.

“Working from home gives people the flexibility to live farther from the city centre . . . We’ve seen a significant increase in people moving from Calgary since the pandemic,” said Watt.

“And your money goes further here than Calgary — it always has.”

Over the past six months, prices in Cochrane were four per cent higher than they were in same time frame in 2020, says CREB.

Even so, it remains attractive to people from much costlier locales in the area such as Canmore, said Watt, where the benchmark price of more than $1.15 million has shot up by 17 per cent since last year.

“We’re seeing quite a few Canmore people coming out,” she said.

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It’s a demand that’s seen Watt and her associates “run off our feet — it’s certainly been at least double the production of 2020.”

But that means the market has been playing catch-up from the first months of the pandemic, said Watt, when sales slowed.

But now, that late-pandemic surge has meant more expensive building materials and a less predictable time frame for construction, said Watt.

“So, instead, people come to the resale market, which is something we haven’t seen before,” she said.

That’s also meant more cash purchases as buyers seek to stake a more solid claim in a competitive sellers’ market, added Watt.

Both Berthiaume and Watt say at least 10 per cent of their more recent buyers also hail from out of province.

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“That’s more so than previously. People are retiring to spend their summers here and are cashing out in expensive places like Vancouver and southern Ontario,” said Berthiaume.

“They don’t even blink at our prices. They see the value here.”

But the surging demand for life outside the city limits has taken its toll on affordability, says CREB.

Okotoks south of Calgary has seen its benchmark price for single family homes climb to $508,200 last month, an increase of nearly 14 per cent from the year before and seven per cent since the start of 2021, they say.

“Record sales and low inventory have caused the months of supply to remain just above one month,” states the latest CREB report.

“The low level of inventory relative to sales has persisted in this market since the third quarter of last year, causing steady gains in prices, especially for detached homes.”

Okotoks’ population has grown by eight per cent in the past five years, to 31,569 in 2020.

BKaufmann@postmedia.com

Twitter: @BillKaufmannjrn