[ranchlandsselling]

I don't see much of a correction happening in Calgary. Sure prices could soften a little, but a few percentage points down here and there and a few flat few years in between those small down year, plus continued job growth and population growth 5-10 years goes by and everything is hunky dory.

What the major correction people tend to ignore is for there to be a major correction people need to walk from their houses. I don’t see that happening. People might be underwater slightly but they’ve only got two options:

1. Ride it out because they have no choice
2. Sell at a loss but buy something else because you have to live somewhere, which supports prices

In the States I'm pretty sure there was a major overbuild of houses. The national vacancy rate in March 2011 was 11.4%. In Calgary where are you going to go if you walk or sell your house? Apartment vacancy was 1.9% in the fall of 2011 and condo vacancy was 5.7%.

“In the US Maine had the highest proportion of empty housing stock, at 22.8%. Other states with gluts of empty houses included Vermont (20.5%), Florida (17.5%), Arizona (16.3%) and Alaska (15.9%)”

In the US the apartment vacancy just hit its lowest level in 11 years at 5.2%

What was it before all these foreclosure people moved into the rental pool. Comparatively there are not too many options for a city like Calgary.

“The President of Rentfaster.ca, Darren Paddock, says one and two bedroom suites -- under a $1000 a month and in decent areas of Calgary -- move to pretty quickly, but adds any type of apartments in the more coveted areas of the city aren't on the market long.

There are more dire predictions from the Chief Economist with the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. Ben Brunnen predicts if the tightening trend continues, 2013 could be prove to be a real tight rental market in the city with rents going up.”

So baring a major collapse in oil prices and a spike in interest rates above 6% and much higher unemployment I can't see too much damage happening.

I'd be curious to see a poll on what people would do if housing prices dropped 15%. Me? I'd upgrade to a bigger house and either rent out the current one or eat the loss and just consider it a break even on moving into something bigger.

A few million sq. ft. of office space is about to start getting built again in the downtown core. On top of that there are quite a few condo towers being built. That'll create a lot of jobs on the construction side and that’s a decent amount of office space for companies to grow into. They're going to need employees to use up that space. We saw how quickly the office market went from "20% vacancy issue" and "empty office towers" in 2008/09 to “let's build some more”. Office lease rates in the downtown area have been going up about $0.50 a sq. ft. per month in the last few months. Leading up to the boom in 06-08 it was $1.00 a sq. ft. a month. There’s growth to come in Calgary as far as anyone can tell and while you may not get rich buying houses for the foreseeable future I certainly can’t imagine a scenario where prices drop a ton.

Tried to find a “House vacancy rate” for Calgary. Didn’t have much luck though. Also CREB isn’t showing their monthly data so I can’t see what the inventory is.