Chris’ News Roundup – Alberta Edition

Albertans remained the country’s top earners in September

An average Albertan earned $894 per week, including overtime, in September, up 2.1% from August. No other province recorded a similar increase in earnings that month. In fact, Alberta was the only province to register an earnings increase greater than 1%, while paycheques in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia were slightly slimmer. Even Saskatchewan, Alberta’s growth rival in recent month, saw its weekly earnings grow only by slim 0.6% to $765.

Single-detached starts throughout the Capital region in October decreased by 60 per cent from October 2007 to 203 units this year

Wow, you might have thought we were in a spot of overbuild….wait, we were. I also got a call Wednesday about a SFH for about $210k with a current appraised and CMA verified sale price of ~$270 if we spend $10-15k cleaning and doing basic repairs. It’s getting to be a great time to buy.

Alberta’s government should consider financial incentives to promote upgrading of bitumen in the province, says a senior Scotiabank economist.

I agree, and while I don’t see all the upgraders disappearing and shipping all the bitumen to Texas, I don’t want to engender any more risk than necessary. I also want to balance the environmental and social costs of overheated growth.

A 15-storey condominium office tower slated for downtown has been delayed by a neighbourly wrangle, not by an economic downturn, say its developers. There’s still issues besides financing effecting builders, but things are still being built.

Help needed for Heartland…but we see the momentum shifting back towards positive development in Alberta.

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