Every day I am asked how tariffs will affect the Edmonton real estate market. I am a big news and economics nerd, so I’ve been diving daily into research on this topic! I have worked through three major market shifts in Edmonton – the US market crash in 2008, the oil price crash in 2014, and covid, and learned during each of them how to have successful sellers and buyers! While I don’t actually know what will happen, I have a few key thoughts that should help you make decisions in 2025 and beyond:
1) Housing Prices Tend to Go Up Quickly and Down Slowly (AKA Don’t Panic!) Housing tends to react slowly to bad news (and quickly to good news – something called the “ratchet effect” if you want to learn more on it). Even when condos had a 5% chance of selling – you read that right – when only 1 in 20 listed condos in Edmonton were selling, prices only dropped 3-5% per year. And in those times, I sold a LOT of condos. So IF prices drop, it is unlikely that they will happen quickly.
2) We Still Don’t Have Enough Homes In 2024, we had 18,384 new units built in Edmonton but we saw 73,000 new people move to Edmonton (1) . Unless you put 4 new people into each new home including 1-2 bedroom condos (which is unlikely!), we are still short on inventory. When prices dropped / stayed flat from 2007 to 2019 in Edmonton, that was mostly due to an oversupply of inventory. Which leads me to…
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