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Calgary’s housing market woes will deepen when interest rates rise in the near future, says a national economist.

“Home prices are already down by almost four per cent, and we do think that we could see sales and prices fall further through 2016 and 2017,” said Diana Petramala, economist with TD Economics, in a video interview on the bank’s website.

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“We’re betting on maybe a 10 per cent peak-to-trough in home prices in Alberta overall; a large amount of it’s being concentrated in Calgary right now.”

She said mortgage rates are expected to start rising as early as December.

“We see the five-year government bond yield going up by anywhere from 60 to 70 basis points by the end of 2016, so we could see that passed through to consumers in terms of higher five-year fixed mortgage rates of a similar size,” said Petramala.

“And we’ve done analyses on interest rate changes and the impact that they have on the Canadian housing market and we found that that type of movement could bring sales down about 10 to 15 per cent.”