December 15, 2015- Market Update
The Red Deer market continues to behave quite normally for this time of year. Typically sales slow down and the number of active listings go down as well. Our sales are down only slightly in the first two weeks of December compared to the same period last year while the number of active listings is down from last month, but still quite a bit higher than a year ago at this time. The current ratio of sales to listings suggests we are now in a “Buyer’s Market”. It’s time for the other half of the real estate market to have the advantage.
There are two things that we believe are currently contributing to our market. The first is interest rates. Today’s low rates make it much easier for those making payments to keep ahead, and for those looking to buy their first home or move up. There are people not employed in the energy industry that now have an opportunity to take advantage of a bit slower market and those fantastic interest rates.
The second is laid out in the ATB article below. There have been many times in the past few years when headlines lamented the shortage of workers in Alberta and the high number of unfilled jobs. It appears that there is a silver lining in every cloud and at least for a little while until oil prices rise, there will be some happy employers in Alberta that can fill their need for workers.
Employers finding it easier to fill jobs, Todd Hirsch, Chief Economist, Alberta Treasury Branch
The number of unfilled work positions in Alberta fell to 1.6 per cent in August, the lowest level it’s been since 2011 when Statistics Canada started tracking it. It’s also at the level of the national average, making Alberta’s labour market appear to be much more ordinary than it was even a year ago.
For the second quarter of 2015, Statistics Canada reported this morning that Alberta’s job vacancy rate was 3.4 per cent. (The quarterly jobless rate is always higher than the monthly rate because over a three-month period, there are going to be more jobs vacant at some point than during only one month.) That tied us with New Brunswick for the highest in the country.
According to the release this morning, “the job vacancy rate refers to the share of jobs that are unfilled out of all payroll jobs available. It represents the number of job vacancies expressed as a percentage of labour demand; that is, the sum of all occupied and vacant jobs.”
The higher levels of job vacancy in Alberta over the last several years illustrates how tight the labour market was then—and the difficulty that some employers had filling jobs. In this respect, today’s lower job vacancy rate is beneficial to companies because it’s now easier to find qualified applicants.
But the job vacancy rate isn’t low everywhere in Alberta. Canada’s highest job vacancy rate in the second quarter was in Banff–Jasper–Rocky Mountain House, a clear reflection of the great year the tourism industry is enjoying.
