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It's EdmontonThe wealthy are still spending. They are just doing it somewhere with a garage.Last updated 0 minutes ago You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.Edmonton's downtown skyline is visible over the river valley, Wednesday July 17, 2024. Photo by David Bloom /PostmediaDenis Rowley sells luxury homes in Edmonton, but he was a mortgage broker and an appraiser first, and he still reads the market like one: he looks at who can afford to borrow, and what happens when they cannot.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman, and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorNinety per cent of his clients, he says, are carrying a mortgage, and the homes they buy average around $1.2 million. Edmonton has long been Calgary’s quieter, cheaper sibling.“Edmonton normally lags behind Calgary,” Rowley, a long-time realtor at RE/MAX Real Estate Center, said. “Right now we are leading the market.”SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE: FP West: Energy Insider brings you behind the oilpatch’s closed doors with exclusive insights from insiders every Wednesday morning.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of FP West: Energy Insider will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againHe is describing, from the ground, what RE/MAX Canada laid out in data on Wednesday. Its latest report on luxury real estate across the country found high-end sales surging in smaller markets through the first four months of the year while the traditional hubs went quiet.In Edmonton, luxury sales from January to April were up 47.7 per cent, compared to the same period last year, the largest jump among the 12 major cities that RE/MAX tracks. Sales jumped by 27 per cent in Saskatoon and 13.5 per cent in Calgary.Toronto and Vancouver went the other way. They still move more luxury dollars than anywhere else, but they moved much fewer in the early months of the year.Toronto’s luxury sales — properties worth over $4 million — fell by close to 17 per cent during the period, compared to a year earlier, and Vancouver’s fell nearly 20 per cent, according to RE/MAX.In the largest, priciest markets, the report says, uncertainty has pushed affluent buyers into a wait-and-see crouch. It does not help that both cities impose costs the Prairies do not: land transfer taxes, vacancy taxes and Vancouver’s speculation tax.“Luxury is no longer defined solely by Canada’s largest urban centres,” said Don Kottick, president of RE/MAX Canada, who calls it a rebalance, not a retreat.The wealthy are still spending. They are just doing it somewhere with a garage.When a city’s luxury tier starts near a million dollars, as it does in Edmonton, instead of the $4 million it takes to register in Vancouver, the question is who is writing the cheques.For scale: the typical Edmonton home sold for about $492,000 in May, the average detached house for $605,000, according to the Realtors Association of Edmonton. A $1.2-million sale is more than double the average market price.Part of what’s driving the growth is migration. Alberta has led the country in net interprovincial migration, and someone who sold a semi-detached home in Toronto arrives with equity that buys a lot more house, a lot more lawn and a heated garage they will use eight months a year.The tax math helps: no land transfer tax; no provincial sales tax, while a comparable Toronto closing can run five figures before the lights are on.But the money is quieter and more local than the migration story suggests.Jason Holland, a 14-year veteran selling high-end homes for RE/MAX River City, said most of his million-dollar buyers are locals trading up, with only 10 to 20 percent from outside Alberta.What has changed is appetite: business owners who once stayed put are buying a bigger home, or buying land and building.“Quiet wealth,” he calls it, and there is more of it here than Edmonton’s plain reputation admits. On the local listings this week, he counts 304 homes selling for over $1 million across the city.Some of Edmonton’s own brokers split on a basic question: is this surge paid for in cash, or on credit?The national wisdom says luxury runs on cash. Sotheby’s credits the segment’s resilience to all-cash buyers and deep equity, and cash sidesteps the federal mortgage stress test entirely.By that logic, Edmonton should look like everywhere else: the eight-figure penthouse, the offshore money, the buyer who needs no bank.Rowley said it does not. Nine in ten of his million-dollar buyers are financed, trading up with equity in hand and borrowing the rest. Before he sold houses, he priced and financed them, and to him a market this leveraged is a fragile one.Holland sees the opposite. Most of his buyers are paying cash, money already made rather than money still owed, which he says makes the growth sturdier than it looks.Two veterans in one city, working in the same price bracket, offer opposite answers.They may each be right about a different corner of the market: Rowley at the entry tier, where buyers stretch, and Holland higher up, where they do not.For now, the momentum runs west. But Rowley is already bracing for a possible turn, and the thing he is watching is foreclosures. He expects the count to climb and, if it does, Edmonton could slide back a step behind Calgary.It is not a hard forecast: a market this financed is exposed to whatever happens next to those mortgages.Edmonton has, at last, the title it spent decades chasing: the hottest luxury market in the country.Whether it holds could depend on who is actually driving the growth: buyers paying cash, or the ones still paying it off.Bookmark our website and support our journalism:Don’t miss the news you need to know — add EdmontonJournal.com and EdmontonSun.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal | The Edmonton Sun. 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