The crazy prices in the housing market has dominated headlines for the entire year, but we may finally be seeing a bit of relief for people looking to buy a home. Recent stats show the median price of detached homes in July in Strathmore was $399 000, which is down from the year to date price of $446 000. Real estate agent Hayley Poirier explained that this drop isn't surprising.

"We've seen a slight decrease in the pricing, but that was expected because the highs that we saw in the earlier part of the year just couldn't be sustained, so we're seeing just a very slight levelling off to a more normal pace."

Prices going down is certainly welcome news for many looking to find a home, but it's likely that we won't be seeing prices continue to go down. While Poirier says it's unlikely that prices will go up again unless interest rates spikes like crazy, she expects the market to stabilize at these prices for the near future.

"Our inventory is really down. If you're looking at how many months of product we have, 1.76 is well below what we would consider a good sustainable number of around 6-7 months of inventory. We see a levelling off, and part of that is because the inventory still is not to the level we like to see it at."

Ultimately, Poirier explains this is a classic case of supply and demand. If supply continues to be significantly lower than the ideal 6-7 months benchmark, we can expect prices to sit at around where they are now. She added prices were really high before because people were eager to buy despite costs, but now that people have calmed down we've seen demand drop.

A big part of creating supply is having more sellers, but if there aren't alternatives for sellers to move to, there won't be a significant jump. The lack of inventory has created a logjam where people aren't selling and supply stays low.

"There's a lot of sellers who are taking their time to decide whether or not they want to list their home to sell it, because they also need to find a new home. If we have sellers who feel like they do have a home to choose, then they would put their home on the market, so that is still a supply and demand thing."

Rather ironically, the recent success of our oil and gas industry has actually created another scenario preventing house prices from dropping. Poirier explained that while the success of the oil and gas industry is amazing for the province as a whole, it creates the immediate housing problem of supply and demand.

"We believe that part of the levelling off is going to be because of our oil and gas industry, and we're still seeing a really great uptick in the oil and gas industry and people moving back to the province to be able to capitalize on having a career again. So that's not going to lower the prices, but it's going to affect the amount of people migrating to Alberta. We're definitely seeing people from other provinces moving back again."

The long term benefits of a successful oil and gas industry could potentially far outweigh the immediate housing crisis, but that doesn't change the fact that in the near future we should expect housing prices to stay where they are.

"It's a good thing (oil and gas is doing well) because other industries see strength in Alberta, they start investing in Alberta again."

While it may be a bit disappointing for some to hear that prices may not be dropping, it seems like we'll have a stable market, which is significantly better than the volatile, expensive market we were dealing with not too long ago.

"Stable is where we want to be, we use the word balanced market, and that's what we're striving for."

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