Queen Alexandra
$369,000
$363,000
23
Alison Dowdall
This bungalow had recent upgrades and has a full double garage, yard and garden. It’s a bright, three-bedroom home with a separate entrance to a full finished basement suite. With new shingles, windows, fridge and washing machine, its a newly renovated home ready for a new owner.
The new owner came is a mid-20s university student who used an inheritance to become a first time homebuyer. She purchased the character bungalow in the University-adjacent neighbourhood of Queen Alexandra. She will reside in the upper home and rent out the suite to another student to subsidize the payments on the property.
Agent Alison Dowdall says real estate near the university, LRT, Whyte or Jasper Ave, always sells at a faster pace, and that as long as the house is priced fairly, it will gain traction and sell.
“This deal is like many others I’ve had or realtor I know have had,” Dowdall says, adding that consumers want to subsidize their mortgage or invest where they know they’ll get a tenant.
The rental market in these areas is top tier, she says, with students from every small town coming to Edmonton needing somewhere to stay August-June. “Normally for the price point my client paid on this house you’d find a slightly less-upgraded home, but as I said the agent priced it competitively and as my broker says, ‘market value doesn’t really exist’ — it’s what a reasonable buyer will pay a reasonable seller, with reasonable being the key word.”
As she searches for another house in the same zone with similar features to this one, she’s noticed the inventory to be worsening, with tenants in the home for far too long and homes not cared for. But another benefit behind this home is that “the seller occupied upstairs, so it was not a full ‘tenant takeover.'”
