Welcome to our latest blog post where we delve into the pivotal trends shaping Edmonton’s real estate and mortgage landscape in 2024. In this engaging and informative video, Josh Tagg, a renowned Mortgage Broker at Mortgages for Less, teams up with Jay Lewis, a seasoned Realtor at ReMax, to provide a deep dive into the dynamic real estate market of Edmonton.

As we step into 2024, the real estate scene is buzzing with new developments, challenges, and opportunities. In this insightful dialogue, Josh and Jay highlight the top four key factors poised to influence the market this year. They discuss the crunch in housing inventory due to a slowdown in construction, the potential impact of lower interest rates on the market dynamics, shifts in the rental market, and the overall consumer confidence underpinned by strong economic indicators in Alberta.

This video is not just a conversation; it’s a roadmap for buyers, sellers, investors, and homeowners looking to navigate the complexities of the Edmonton real estate market. Accompanied by a detailed transcript, this blog post offers a comprehensive overview for anyone looking to make informed decisions in 2024’s real estate journey.

Whether you’re planning to invest, buy your first home, or refinance, the insights from Josh and Jay are invaluable. So, buckle up and get ready to explore the Edmonton real estate market with two of the industry’s most knowledgeable professionals!

Josh Tagg: Here we are again, as we’re entering 2024, Jay and I have four things that we think that you need to watch out for with housing, real estate and mortgages in 2024. So to get started, Jay, how about you tell us about the first one?

Edmonton Housing Supply Crunch

Jay Lewis: One of the big things we’re going to deal with in 2024 is this inventory crunch. I think there’s a couple of things that we’ve ran into that’s going to cause it.

We found in 2023, some builders started tapering off their starts and they even slowed them down and maybe even paused them. And so that’s going to really have a big effect on the inventory that buyers get to choose from.

We have noticed in the last quarter of 2023 and even entering 2024 here, our buyers have so much less to choose from. And so with the lack of, you know, resale homes coming on the market and then a lower new construction home, you know, there’s just way less to pick from for our buyers for sure.

Lower Edmonton Mortgage Interest Rates

Josh Tagg: And number two is we are expecting to see some lower interest rates. We know that the Bank of Canada raised rates a lot in the last two years to combat the inflation and that’s more or less taken care of now.

The speculation is not if, but when the Bank of Canada will be lowering rates. We’ve already seen rates lowering on the fixed rate side. We’re expecting the Bank of Canada in March, April, or maybe May to start lowering it’s rate and many economists are predicting that we’re going to see 2% in interest rate drops.

That will be huge because anybody who’s sitting on the sidelines as a result of higher interest rates is now going to be coming back to the market, which is going to put even further pressure on that low inventory number and upward pressure on those prices. We’re definitely going to see lower mortgage rates play a big role in 2024.

Edmonton’s Tight Rental Market

Jay Lewis: The tight rental market is certainly something that we’ve been talking about with some of our buyers. There’s this double-edged sword that we’ve noticed where a whole bunch of homes came off the long-term rental market and went into the short-term rental market through Airbnb. That’s been helpful for some of our buyers because they want a short-term sort of rental. But… You know, this long term rental shortage is definitely having an impact.

People are not able to rent and need to buy instead. What we’re going to see again in 2024 is a shortage of affordable rentals. We’re going to see the rental rate continue to rise. There has been a 12% raise in the overall rental market price. And I think 2024 is going to tell us the exact same story. Less to rent, there are going to be maybe a few more short-term rentals available but they’re going to be expensive and so I think that’s going to be a real thing to look out for in 2024.

Growing Consumer Confidence

Josh Tagg: The last one is consumer confidence as we’ve been coming out of this post COVID mess, whatever we want to call it. We had hyper low interest rates to spur the economy. A lot of that was in housing in 2021 and 2022, a then lot of slowdown that was engineered by the Bank of Canada. But we are seeing very low unemployment numbers in Alberta and across the country. They’re lower than they were in the years before COVID hit. That’s a positive thing!

We’re going to see some economic growth in Canada and Jay, you’ve been telling me all about the new projects that are coming on in and around Edmonton that are bringing people. We’re getting massive influx of people from other provinces into Alberta and Edmonton, which is of course pushing on house prices, pushing on that rental market, like you said, but it’s also showing a confidence in Alberta. Jay, how about you tell us a bit about those projects?

Jay Lewis: Yeah, so I think the largest one that everybody’s talking about here right now is the $11.5 Billion petrochemical facility that’s being done in Fort Saskatchewan. There’s some massive spin-off that’s going to be created as a result.

There will be close to 500 new jobs when the project is finished that are going to be created and so what we’re really seeing is that people are realizing that there is money pouring back into this province like it used to. There’s a new even confidence from the business sector and it’s really helping the residents of Alberta have more confidence that we can continue to sort of go forward in the future confidently knowing that we’ll be able to create some things of value here.

The side effect of that has really been we’re seeing lots of new land developments started, new housing communities that are started just south of Fort Saskatchewan. Sherwood Park is always really strong and that’s just south of Fort Saskatchewan. So between some of these communities around Edmonton and then the spin-off it is going to create a big demand in Edmonton as well. The north side of Edmonton has easy access to Fort Saskatchewan. That’s just one of them.

There’s another one out towards Spruce Grove and Stony Plain. There’s a new ballpark going up in Spruce Grove. We’ve seen a chocolate company that moved their office to Stoney Plain. Genesis has got some expansion going on their power plant as well. There is lots of money pouring into Alberta. Lots of confidence, people have jobs, continue to work and now they’re ready to buy and settle into Alberta.

Josh Tagg: So there we’ve got four things to watch for in 2024, as you consider getting into or staying in the Edmonton real estate market and applying for and getting or refinancing your mortgage.