The Calgary housing market looks like the Energizer Bunny these days – it just keeps going and going.

Houses are selling faster than they’re listed, says Calgary Real Estate Board president Joyce Travis. “In the time I’ve been in real estate, I haven’t seen a market like this last more than three months,” she says. “But we’re into four now.”

Migration, a healthy job market and low interest rates are driving sales. Even the low vacancy rate in rental properties makes it hard for people to rent for six months while they get to know the city, she adds.

If the sellers’ market continues long enough, rising prices will force some people out of the market or force them to settle for less house than they wanted to buy. It will start with first-time buyers, she says.

But it hasn’t started yet.

The first sign will be when first-time buyers can’t qualify, either because of higher interest rates, higher prices or both. It will happen faster if both costs rise.

“I don’t think it will stall the market, but it will level out and it will stop the frenzy,” says Travis.

The real estate board’s figures show the best March and second-best month ever for pre-owned home sales, trailing only May of last year. Calgarians bought 2,344 units – 1,737 single-family, 590 condominium and 17 mobile home – up from totals of 2,303 in February and 1,999 in March of 2001. Last month set a record for condo sales.

The average sale price last month was $194,158, an increase of three per cent from February’s $188,328 and five per cent over last March’s $184,132. The residential median price for March was $178,000, compared to $176,000 in February and $169,000 for March of 2001.

In Edmonton, the chilling weather in the first quarter of the year didn’t prevent a sizzling housing market.

The Edmonton Real Estate Board reported 3,645 home sales to the end of March, up 7.9 per cent from the first quarter of 2001. Houses were on the market for an average of 27 days in March, compared to 45 days in March of last year.

Increasing demand has led to tighter supply in the provincial capital region. “Low inventory is the only thing standing between a record number of buyers and their new home,” EREB president Ken Shearer says.

The median price of detached houses in Edmonton in March was $163,800, an increase of 20.2 per cent from March of 2001, the EREB said.

New housing is being driven by mortgage rates, says Marni Plunkett, senior market analyst for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. in Calgary. The pace of new housing construction should continue through the first half of 2002 and slow down in the second half. “It will still be one of the best years on record for new home construction, but not the best,” she said last week.

The slowdown will in part be due to some of the sales in the last quarter of 2001 and the first quarter of 2002 being “stolen” from the later quarters as low mortgage rates induced first-time buyers or move-up buyers to enter the market early.

Migration, income gains and job creation allow people to buy houses. Economic growth and migration are expected to continue and interest rates aren’t expected to rise significantly by the end of the year.

Last year was so strong on the housing front that the pace can’t be maintained, and there has been some slowing, said Plunkett.

The City of Calgary issued $188.6 million worth of building permits in March, up eight per cent from $175.3 million in March of 2001.

But city hall reports that residential permits soared 78 per cent to $142.8 million from $80.2 million year to year. Single-family permits made up $108.4 million of that amount, an increase of 63 per cent from $66.4 million a year ago.

Non-residential permits in March dropped 52 per cent from 2001, hitting $45.8 million, compared to $95.1 million.

So far this year, Calgary building permits are valued at $458.7 million, a rise of 13 per cent from $406 million in the first three months of 2001.

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O&Y REIT has completed its acquisition of a half interest in the 404,000-sq.-ft. Canadian Western Bank and the 182,000-sq.-ft. Enbridge Tower office buildings in Edmonton.

O&Y Real Estate Investment Trust is a closed-end real estate investment trust created to invest in quality office buildings in major markets across Canada.

It owns 18 Class A and Class B multi-tenant and government office buildings totalling 4.5 million sq. ft., and an indirect interest in First Canadian Place, a 2.7-million-sq.-ft., 72-storey complex in downtown Toronto.

O&Y recently completed a private placement of about 4.62 million units at $10.85 per unit, for aggregate gross proceeds of just over $50 million.

The money will be used for current and future acquisitions and to pay down an existing acquisition facility.

As part of the transaction, O&Y Properties Corp. exercised its maintenance right to buy just over half of the issue.