Want to Invest in Edmonton Real Estate? Pick 107th Avenue
Today, I went to view some condos. I didn’t really see any that I liked, but there are plenty more units in this city. In fact, if you’re looking to buy your first place, a condo is probably the best way to go right now. The market seems to be saturated, so the prices are low (compared to houses, at least).
One place where the prices are especially low is along the Avenue of Nations (107 Avenue). I know this because the realtor I’m working with told me so. He admitted that it’s a rough neighbourhood, and that he wouldn’t want to live there himself. He also acknowledged that I probably wouldn’t want to live there right now, either.
What he did tell me is that the city is going to be putting a lot of money into that area in the next few years. It’s being predicted that prices in that area are going to see a huge increase in a few years. It’s not somewhere that I’d want to live right now (though, I might look at some condos down there that he mentioned, just out of curiosity), but if I had enough money to purchase an investment property, in addition to a place for myself, I would totally be willing to invest in a place down there.
It’s right near Grant MacEwan College, so it would probably be easy to find a student to rent the place out to. And, once the property values in the area increase, you could either sell the place for a profit, or move in yourself (since the neighbourhood will have been cleaned up by that time, presumably).
That said, I certainly wouldn’t want to live in that area right now. I live on 107 Avenue (106, technically, but my parking lot backs onto 107) right now, and I feel perfectly safe on my block. However, I wouldn’t want to walk more than a block to the east of my building at night. Perhaps I’m just being paranoid, but I’d be worried about getting mugged. There are very few areas in Edmonton that I feel unsafe walking at night, and the Avenue of Nations is one of them.
I also don’t like having my tires slashed. During a recent drive through the area surrounding 107 Avenue (between about 110 Street and 97 Street), I noticed that there were several apartment blocks where nearly every vehicle in the parking lot had its tires slashed. It looked they had been slashed quite a long time ago, and that the owners hadn’t bothered replacing them, because they knew that the new tires would be slashed the very next day.
Despite all of that, I am curious about the property in the area. As I said, it’s highly unlikely that I would actually live in the area. Since I don’t have the money to buy a home for myself, in addition to an investment property, I will not be investing in the area.
If, however, you are a forward thinking property investor, 107 Avenue just might be worth a look.