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By Gates Guarin

Real estate board recaps 2022 housing market

Dec 15, 2022 | 3:46 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – The next head of the Medicine Hat Real Estate Board says 2022 has been an interesting year for the housing market.

Matt Teel, president-elect of the board for 2023, says it was a slow start to the year, as low inventory coupled with high demand during the first two quarters caused the average home price to rise. The spring saw the housing market heat up, but demand shifted in the second half of the year.

“We certainly saw demand slow in the fall,” Teel says. “As interest rates started to rise and we started to see them coming above that four and five per cent, demand slowed and inventory being low, those two combined to just show stats of lower sales. However, year-over-year we’re still above trends so that is the positive we can take out of it.”

Demand in the housing market fell not only in Medicine Hat but across the country.

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The Canadian Real Estate Association says sales were down three point three per cent in November, resuming an overall downward trend and erasing gains made in October. The drop came as the number of newly listed homes fell one point three per cent on a month-over-month basis last month. Year-over-year, home sales were down almost 39 per cent across the country.

Teel says getting back to a bit more certainty this year has made the market somewhat more predictable than the last few.

“The last two years have been really hard to even put a label on that because it’s been a time where we can’t tell what’s going to happen next and we haven’t been able to tell over the last couple of years, and obviously the sales activity over the last couple of years weren’t something anybody predicted at the start of the pandemic, but now with interest rates rising, now it’s showing that slow in our market and slow in demand and it should,” Teel says.

Teel adds the real estate board will continue to monitor the current interest rate on a month-by-month basis heading into 2023.