Results from the recent City of Edmonton census show the population of Edmonton is on the rise. Annual growth has average 12,000 since 2009 and the population currently sits at 817,498. What is particularly interesting is the breakdown of our population, we are much younger than typical Canadian cities and the country as a whole. Looking at the population pyramids below, you can see the national pyramid is quite top heavy compared to Edmonton’s more working age heavy shape:
Canada population 2010
Edmonton population 2012
Roughly half of dwellings in Edmonton are single family homes, this number has not changed in the past four years. There was a slight increase in the percentage of residents living in “row houses” since 2008:
Population by Structure Type
57% of Edmontonians own their homes, down from 63% in 2008:
Own vs. Rent
The most recent data I could find on national homeownership was from 2006, when 68.4% of Canadians owned their homes – a record at the time.
Almost 8000 people who reported living in their current home for less than year also reported they moved here from outside of Canada.
About Sara MacLennan
Sara MacLennan is the Director of Marketing at Liv Real Estate and a licensed Real Estate Associate. The bulk of Sara’s experience and wealth of expertise lies in on-line technology and marketing both for agents and consumers. Sara is the former National Director for Interactive Marketing for Coldwell Banker Canada where she was responsible for an extensive training program traveling to offices across the country training agents and brokers on marketing and technology. Find Sara on Twitter @edmontonblogger.
Client Testimonial for Justin Tazi
Client Testimonial for Bill Bhamra
Client Testimonial for Mira Wannous
Client Testimonial for Nathan Mol 
Client Testimonial for Nathan Mol 
Client Testimonial for Travis Dochuk
Client Testimonial for Beverley Hasinoff
Client Testimonial for Beverley Hasinoff
Client Testimonial for Richard Widynowski
Client Testimonial for Bill Bhamra
Client Testimonial for Mira Wannous
Client Testimonial for Beverley Hasinoff
Client Testimonial for Richard Widynowski
Client Testimonial for Justin Tazi
Client Testimonial for Sheldon Johnston
Client Testimonial for Bill Bhamra
Client Testimonial for Tracy Vipond
Client Testimonial for Justin Tazi
Client Testimonial for Nathan Mol 
Client Testimonial for Bill Bhamra
12000 per year averages about 3-4000 extra new housing needed per year. What has been the avg # of new housing starts over the last few years here?
I don’t know about housing starts, but there was a net of about 4,590 units added per year. The persons/household ratio has remained constant at 2.3
This is good news.
In 2010 Edmonton had 3417 single starts and 2963 multiple starts for a total of 6110: taken from the City of Edmonton Website.
link to edmonton.ca
With out knowing the exact age of the new 12000 people its hard to say if there are too many new homes being built. If the 12000 people were all young 20-30, single with no kids, then the numbers would be really good for supply and demand. Now if the the 12000 people were all married couples with 3 kids… than Edmonton is producing an excess of housing, which is not good for property values.
The standard numbers that the City of Edmonton uses to convert population projections into housing units is 3.3 for single family, 2.1 for multi-family. assuming the ratios remain constant, that means that 12,000 people requires about 4,450 new units – half single-family, half multi.
By the report YEGland references, that amount of housing should be enough for 18,450 people, unless household size is decreasing.
However, some of those housing starts may be replacing housing units lost to redevelopment.
Also, 12,000 per year is slightly faster than the most recent City projections (from 2009), of about 11,400 per year.
57% own their homes in Edmonton? you must be kidding…. break this into who owns the homes and who pays rent to the banks and then you have the real picture… to own something means no mortgage from what I know… I bet the % is more around 25-30% and not all of those have money to retire so they will have to sell at one point in time.
Then your idea of ownership is clearly wrong. You own something (partially) as long as your stake is more than $0.
I prefer to be wrong and own by my definition…
how can you be owner of a house if you put 5% or 0% downpaiment? if you want to sell it next day you are in negative teritory, aren’t you? so how is partial owning applying to this situation?
You are the owner if you can live in that house and can determine who can live there.
Most entities are not owned by a single person. Who owns Apple? Who owns Microsoft? They are owned by multiple owners, each with their own interest served.
As with a single house, both you and the bank own the house at the same time. You get to live there and enjoy the likely increase in value. The bank gets to make money on the interest difference.
DENILE…. I agree with the OP. If you dont own 100% of the house, you dont OWN the house….
Buying a house 5% down is no different than renting, except for the maintenance, taxes and all the other fun stuff that comes along with home ownership.
It is NOT an investment unless your house increases in value, or make payments ahead of schedule….
Watch the news lately? Look whats happening in B.C…. oh but thats right its Alberta we are different here! Just like 3 years ago when we said hey this is Canada we are different here!
Ah, you got me! But thanks to the Urban Dictionary, I found:
denile: The next-best alternative when someone can’t spell “denial”.
If you are correct, then you will have to be single to be an owner of anything. If you are married, you only own 50%.
From statscan 2008
According to the 2008 Survey of Household Spending, there were 13 million households in Canada, of which about 65% owned a home (see Data source and definitions). Among homeowners, 57% made a mortgage payment in 2008 and the remaining 43% were mortgage-free
So by your view Calator 43% are “owners” as in mortgage free.
Re the new house starts, does anyone know the number of torn downs? I mean, a lot of the single or multi-family new starts are on in-fill lots.
The new start figure is clearly more than the net increase of units — the same way you can’t use new birth figure as net increase of population.
In the last 3 years there have been about 17,000 housing starts, and an increase in active units + units under construction of about 15,000.
This leads me to figure about 2,000 units were abandoned/demolished/replaced in that time, give or take.
Thanks! That’s quite a ratio.
Population is rising in most of the cities including Vancouver, Calgary, GTA, Boston, Miami, Seattle, NYC and others. They all need place to live.
It seems price would not go down.
Indeed, a few of these cities are at historic high price level, dispite the general economic slow down. Miami is probably the worst of the bunch in terms of recent trends. That’s because Miami’s new population are mostly illegal aliens with no jobs. (MiB needed!)
Well to call poor people who try to find better place to live aliens is quite stupid. I bet you are white christian Canadian who is disgusted with those brown people coming from the South.
Guess what, they also have their dreams and try to live their lives.
And for your information, in Canada there isincreasing trend of U.S. Immigration so the situation is getting quite bad down there. Every smart person just take opportunities. The majority of coming Americans is not going to steal from us, they come to work. The same stands for Indians (even they can probable end working in grow-ops).
He used the term “illegal aliens” which is a government term for people who have entered the country illegally. It has absolutely nothing to do with their skin colour.
God, I wish people would stop reaching for the race card every time they hear anything even remotely resembling something they might find offensive.
…and then after accusing wsn of being a white supremist, you insult Indians as being operators of grow-ops.
This shows that Edmonton is one of the fastest growing places in Alberta. Its economy is second only to Calgary in Alberta, and it shows great promise as a location for investors to invest in.