Quote:
Originally Posted by 1stLand
A news report released today put Calgary as #1 in average household income in Canada at approx. $90,000 / year. Edmonton followed as the 2nd highest household income per household.
at 4x's a households income, thats $360,000 for an average house, at 5x's a households income, thats an average price of $450,000 which is closer to where Calgary is right now.
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Unfortunately, the long term ratio has been more like 3ish range (Which I assume correlates well to the 33%ish borrowing benchmark of total income for housing costs, etc.)
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/pub...housing-bubble
When you factor in median incomes, the same historic range appears for housing prices. Housing prices for 20 years, prior to 2000, stayed in a narrow range of between 3 and 4 times provincial annual median income.
Quote:
Originally Posted by username
After that, well it totally depends upon the economy and more importantly the price of oil and gas. There's so much uncertainty out there right now I just don't see how anyone thinks they can predict what's actually going to happen. One things for sure, should the prices of oil and gas decline and stay supressed for some time, this city could become the ghost town that it was in the early 80's.
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I don't think we'll be a ghost town (I hope not at least) but gas prices continue to be pretty poor. Alberta is still pretty gas "heavy" versus oil but certainly more oil is coming onstream. AECO gas prices are up slightly to $3.50 currently (it was down to $3.00 recently - down from the original $4.00 early in the year when it was originally mentioned in this thread.) US rig counts are still near historical peaks though - shale gas leases, drill 'em or lose em will keep supply brimming and prices pretty low for a good while yet.