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There's quite a few investment companies that are guarenteeing 8+% return right now.. real estate or commercial deals where you invest your money, they pay whatever percent while they use it, then at the end you get a slice of whatever the project pulls in. I'm not sure what the risk is of those though.

As for if the market can sustain it's current pace and about people moving back...

I don't think anyone expects property values to go up 50% over the next year again, but 20% isn't out of the question for Calgary. And other places like Edmonton, Red Deer, and even Lethbridge could still show some impressive numbers yet. But overall the situation will not downturn any time soon. Affordability is very high compared to everywhere else, inmigration is huge, unemployment is super low, salaries are way up, consumer spending is high (people are confident in the economy), companies can't get people in fast enough to work..

In almost all indicators Alberta leads the country, and the Economist magazine rated Canada #2 in the world to put your money into for the next 5 years (Denmark was #1, but their economy isn't nearly as large and diverse). There's $1 Trillion of planned investment into Alberta in the next 10 years, that's a lot of economic growth.

Could there be small bumps as things adjust to keep the economy from overheating? Sure, Fort Mcmurray was talking about doing things to slow down economic growth there. But not enough to scare me (or others) out of the market.

And people moving back to Saskabush or whatever only give someone else who has a job a place to live, and it improves the economy of wherever those people move back to, so it has a positive ripple effect there too.

When the economic indicators here look like they do in Vancouver, then I'll be getting out.

The biggest issue right now is finding places in Calgary that cashflow without having to put down 35-40%. Not impossible, but not easy.