Brodie Duczek, his fiancé Darcie Cooper, and their dog Skylar pose for a photo outside their newly purchased house in Sage Hill on Saturday, January 9, 2021. Azin Ghaffari/Postmedia Take one global pandemic and mix in two business lockdowns, an oil-price plunge and the worst economic contraction in modern Alberta history. You’d think this recipe would have shaken the housing market throughout 2020. Yet, the entire province saw the strongest December home sales since 2006, an era when George Bush was the U.S. president and oil prices were bouncing around US$60 a barrel, about to start a remarkable run to a record $147 by mid-2008. Last month, despite economic turbulence, including additional public-health restrictions designed to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 3,800 homes were sold across Alberta. That represents a 38-per-cent jump from sales in December 2019, according to the Alberta Real Estate Association (AREA). Across the province, the average residential sales price was up almost eight per cent from a year earlier. “It is counterintuitive when you have a job market that’s been struggling and everything else that’s going on with the rest of the economy,” said Ann-Marie Lurie, chief economist with AREA and […]
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