Charlottetown housing market becoming increasingly competitive

The latest outlook from theCanada Mortgage and Housing Corporation suggests there is an imbalance in the supply of housesand the demand from buyers looking for them.

The corporation released its fall 2017 Housing Market Outlook this week. It showing that a rapid growth in demand for homes over the last two years that outpaced supply will likely level off somewhat in Charlottetown over the next year, but the city will remain a seller'smarket.

Sally Murray knows this all too well.

She started looking for a home in August. She didn't want to move her kids out of the school zone they were in, but because that meant looking downtown, it was much more competitive.

"That was severely stressful, Idon't think I've ever been as stressed out in my life as Iwas during this house search. It was exhausting,"she said.

'It's just insane'

Murray's rental home soldand she didn't want to leave the neighbourhood. Shesaid that many of the houses she found were selling within a day.

"I think it's just insane," she said.

"There's just limited inventory, people need places to live either to rent or buy."

She and her family did manage to find a house, but there were multiple bidders and she thinks a letter she wrote helped her case with the seller.

'Alimited edition'

The CMHCsays immigration has pushed demand up in Charlottetown while a shortage of labour to build new homes has hindered the supply.

Mary Jane Webster, the chair of the board of the P.E.I. Real Estate Association, said the market is competitive in Charlottetown.

"It's a lot of people wanting to buy the same item basically,so it's a limited edition of something," she said.

The association says P.E.I. now has the lowest number of houses on the market since 2001and prices are up about 10 per cent.

CMHC says there are new homes being built, which should help, but the agency expects demand to remain strong from buyers for months to come.

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