Central Alberta’s residential resale market continued to gain momentum in February, although sales numbers were down from a year ago.
Multiple Listing Service statistics provided by the Central Alberta Realtors Association indicate that there were 125 home sales in Red Deer and 150 in the surrounding region last month.
Those figures were up from 104 and 136 in January, which in turn were improvements over December’s sales tallies.
However, in February 2013, there were 142 MLS home sales in Red Deer and 143 outside the city, for a total that was 3.5 per cent higher than for the same month this year.
The average selling price in Red Deer this February was $338,004, up from $316,1203 a year earlier. In the area outside the city, the average price increased to $303,146 from $263,226.
The Central Alberta Realtors Association has cautioned that average prices are not a good indicator of market trends, because the types and locations of properties sold vary from period to period.
There were 183 new residential listings in Red Deer processed through the MLS system in February, and 287 outside the city. These figures were both down from last year, when the corresponding numbers were 226 and 297.
In January 2014, there were 186 new listings in Red Deer and 280 elsewhere in Central Alberta.