It was not hard to count the dollar volume for Edmonton’s downtown highrise office building sales for the first half of this year. There were zero transactions, reports a study from Edmonton real estate intelligence firm The Network.
That compares with one highrise office tower sale in the same period a year earlier, which sold for $22 million.
Overall downtown office property sales in Alberta’s capital city reached $5.1 million with two transactions, down from two sales and an $8 million volume in the first six months of 2018.
Suburban office sales were higher, notching eight sales at a dollar volume of $16.6 million, but remained down 40 per cent in transactions and 50 per cent in dollar volume from a year earlier.
Industrial market
Edmonton's industrial sector was also down in the first half of the year.
“While total [industrial] sales have decreased 41 per cent compared to 2018, total dollar volume is still above 2017,” the Network reported. At $161.7 million, dollar volume was down 61 per cent from 2018.
Commenting on the overall commercial-industrial real estate market in Edmonton, the Network concluded “the second half is anticipated to be slow for overall numbers with improving conditions for the later months of the year.”
Overall, the city's commercial real estate sector notched up just $780 million in sales in 2019's first six months, compared with $1.3 billion in the same period in 2018 (see chart below) and $1.2 billion in 2017.
