Jasperites sell amongst themselves

Over the last few months you might have a noticed a few extra Jasper properties with For Sale signs out front.

According to Rich Potter, broker and owner of Royal LePage Summitview Realty, there hasn’t been much change in the number of houses being sold in Jasper. “As far as volumes of sales go it’s just typical,” he explained. “What’s not the same now is we have a much higher volume of listings than we’ve had for years.”

In the Jasper housing market Potter said he generally sells between 25 and 50 houses a year and would never have more than “a couple” on the market at once.

Currently, there are about 15 to 20 houses on the market. “There’s a wide variety of reasons why people are putting their houses on the market,” Potter said. “People might feel that prices are as high as they’re going to be and they want to cash out at the perceived top of the market. Other people are buying down, they’ve enjoyed big price run ups and now they want to get rid of a mortgage and buy something smaller. Other people want to move up in the market place and sell their own and get something else. I’ve got investors who have bought four or five years ago and they can realize a significant increase in their equity and so they’re choosing to sell.”

With the average advertised house price in Jasper up in the high $600 to $700 thousands, the drop in home prices in the rest of the country is not evident here. “We’re getting sale prices that have basically tracked along equivalent to anything that happened last year,” said Potter. 

“Because of [Jasper’s] geographical location, it’s able to sit on an island outside of whatever is going on in Alberta, or the rest of Canada.”

Since about December, Potter said, houses have slowly “trickled” onto the market. “All of a sudden I’ve got eight listings whereas a month ago I had one or two,” he said.

As a result, the real estate guru calls it a buyer’s market. “When you have a big supply like this, certainly buyers hold the cards.”

Despite this, Jasper still isn’t the market for first-time homeowners. Instead, it’s the Jasperites who already own homes who suddenly have a variety of houses to choose from within the town. 

“If you’re selling a house and buying in the same market you’re not as concerned, You’ve got equity in your own place. If you’re getting a deal on somebody else’s the value on yours may be dropping but you’re getting a deal on that other place,” he said. “Most of the stuff you see on the market now are people selling and buying other properties, it’s kind of a double whammy.”