The majority of top real-estate industry executives in Canada rank not only Calgary and Edmonton but also even Saskatoon as a better real estate investment destination than Vancouver into 2014.
That is the consensus in PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute’s Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2014 survey, released this month.
For overall real-estate investment prospects for next year, the survey respondents ranked Calgary No. 1, Edmonton No. 2, Saskatoon No. 3 and Vancouver in fourth place, ahead of Toronto and Winnipeg.
Of the top nine markets in the country, five of them are in the West, and the rankings of the top four are very close, with a near three-way tie for second place, which Vancouver held in 2013.
The report said Saskatoon is ranked higher than Vancouver for several reasons. Firstly, the economy in Saskatchewan’s largest city is expanding at 5.2% this year. In Vancouver it is 2.2%, down from a tepid 2.6% growth rate in 2012. Saskatoon employment growth is pegged at a startling 6.1% this year and the unemployment rate is around 3%. Vancouver’s jobless rate is 6.8%, up from 6.6% this summer.
The Saskatoon population is growing at pace of 3.5% this year, compared with 1.6% in Vancouver, despite higher levels of immigration on the West Coast.
And average house price in Saskatoon is $343,000, or about one-third the price in Vancouver.
