Richard Froese
South Peace News
Housing and real estate sales in the Peace River region are expected to pick up in 2023, says one local realtor.
Layne Gardner predicts the real estate market in the Peace Country region will be stronger than other areas across Canada.
“It is anticipated Alberta in general will fare better than other parts of the country,” Gardner says.
“Sales declines and price corrections that are being discussed in the news likely won’t have as dramatic an effect locally when compared to some of the more heated markets across the country.”
He reminds people that it’s always important to separate the local market from the Canadian real estate market since there are always such regional disparities.
“The large sale price declines witnessed in Vancouver and Toronto are not going to happen locally as our market was nowhere near as overheated,” Gardner says.
“Interest rates will continue to drag down sales levels, but the optimism and positivity in the local economy should offset that.”
Looking back last year, realty had its ups and downs.
“The 2022 real estate market in the Peace Country started out the year carrying over much of the strength we saw in the market in 2021,” Gardner says.
“It was not until the fourth quarter of 2022 that we saw declines year over year.
“But the effects of the negativity surrounding interest rate increases and the talk of a housing bubble started to take hold and the year finished with monthly sales declines from October to December.”
Some of the decreases were significant year over year, falling in and around a 50 per cent decline from the previous year, he says.
“The strength of the first half of the year helped to offset the declines witnessed later on,” Gardner says.
Residential sales in the Peace River area in 2022 fell by 12.22 per cent from 2021.
Over in the Falher-McLennan region, residential sales in 2022 dropped 19.35 per cent from 2021.
“Factoring in the combined sales of residential, acreage, agricultural and commercial sales reported in our system, the Smoky River region witnessed a 20.08 per cent decrease in sales in 2022 from 2021,” Gardner says.
However, commercial sales in the Smoky and Peace regions were on the upswing.
Commercial real estate sales in the Smoky River region grew by 50 per cent from 2021 and 37.5 per in the Peace River region.
Locally in the Peace River region, commercial sales were up significantly in 2021 and continued to grow in 2022.
“It is the one area of the market that had a sales increase over 2021, whereas residential residential sales declined,” Gardner says.
“Taking into account the whole Peace Country region, we saw commercial activity increase by 38.46 per cent.”