Canada Property Market Overview

Canada might not be the first country that comes to mind as a property investment location but it does offer some interesting opportunities.

The Canadian economy performs well and having one of the highest standards of living in the world attracts its fair share of immigrants to its shores.

Canada is a vast country and has a wide range of landscapes that are a natural draw for millions of tourists a year, particularly to the Rocky Mountains.

Canada’s vast land area also contains a wide range of natural resources including timber, oil, minerals and agriculture. This gives the country a very solid economic base, though is still heavily reliant on trade with the US.

Property prices have risen well over the last few years, particularly in the larger cities, some would say there is not much further room for growth.

One area of the country that is expected to show continues property price growth is in the province of Alberta.

Alberta has huge natural resources, particularly the oil-sand reserves in the north of the province. The high price of oil has now made it economical enough to develop the oil-sand. This has brought a huge wave of investment, jobs and people to the area and is putting natural upwards pressure on the property prices in the province as demand has sky-rocketed.

Given the ever increasing prices and demand for oil property prices in towns such as Calgary, Edmonton and Fort McMurray are expected to boom even further.

The supply in these cities is not enough to keep up with demand and people are having rent before they can buy, especially transient workers. Thus the rental market has also shown good signs of growth.

Mortgage finance has always been more cautious than its neighbour the USA, so whilst it won’t be affected to the same extent as the US housing market price falls in 2009 are inevitable.

Canada’s strong natural resource base will mean that it very well positioned to be a strong player in the future global economy and thus the Canadian property market could be a good bet.