ALL OF MY CLIENTS ask me... what is the market doing right now?  What can I expect?  Most of those who ask this are those NOT in the oil and gas business.  Those in O & G know that the market for jobs is tightening, that projects after projects are lined up and BUSINESS IS GOOD IN ALBERTA!  Those not in the O & G industry base their opinions on observations in their own industries as well as what is reported in the media.

First let me way the media across Canada... let's say CBC television tends to report overal general economic information and if they were to report a specific area, then they report an area close to their target audience and that is... Toronto.  So economic reports on CBC don't usually reflect what is going on in Alberta.

Who does?  You need to watch economic forecasts out of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.  T-D Bank also provides pretty accurage data.  These two bodies will often separate the various areas of Canada s they know full well what is happening in Toronto is not what is happening in Alberta.

So that brings me back to answering the question "What is the market doing?".  I can see investors buying rental properties.  I can see first-time-buyers buying right now.  In fact I sold 3 houses between Christmas and New Years and these were the two groups buying.  I see starter homes rising in price in January through to March and first-step-up homes (double attached garage homes up to $425,000) being the next group to increase in value.  Its a trickle up effect.  It happened in 2005 and its going to happen in 2012.

Some watching media reporting on economic news in Europe and think our market in Alberta is going to tank again.  i doubt it.  In fact I doubt it very highly.  The European debt crises has been going on for six straight months.  Its going to continue at least for another year.  Over the last six months the prices of homes in Calgary has not gone down.  This shows to me that the Calgary market in particular is resilient against the ups and downs of the TSX and European debt crises.    Our housing market is direclty correlated to the price of oil. Watch the price of oil and you can see what the Calgary market is doing.  2012 will bring some nice relief with all housing prices stabilizing and most areas in fact appreciating nicely.  If you are considering buying rental property, then you'd better get on with it now.  Housing prices are not going to get any cheaper than they are right now.