Financial Post Published: Wednesday, July 08, 2009
One of Canada's best-known real-estate firms has upgraded its housing-market outlook for the remainder of this year after second-quarter activity showed a thaw from the deep freeze in activity during the winter. Royal LePage said it expects an average price for home sales of $297,000 by year-end, which would be a 2% drop from last year. It forecasts unit sales of 430,000, down 1% from 2008. Its previous forecast called for housing sales to fall 3.5% this year to 416,000 transactions, and the average price to decline 3% to $295,000. Now, house prices are actually anticipated to appreciate somewhat in much of Central and Eastern Canada, while markets in the West -- such as Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton -- see lower prices as an adjustment to above-average gains in previous years. "With our industry's busiest quarter behind us, we feel comfortable revising our 2009 forecast to the positive," said Phil Soper, chief executive of Royal LePage Real Estate Services.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment