Monday, June 14, 2010 Home Buyers Facing Less CompetionCategories:Buyers,General,Housing,Market Statistics,Market Stats,Sellers,Vancouver,Vancouver Real Estate Vancouver, BC – June 14, 2010. The British Columbia Real Estate Association (BCREA) reports that Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) residential sales in the province declined 4 per cent to 7,950 units in May compared to the same month last year. On a seasonally adjusted basis, MLS® residential unit sales in the province declined 11 per cent in May from April 2010. The average MLS® residential price climbed 7 per cent to $498,294 in May compared to the same month last year. 
“A slower pace of home sales combined with an increase in the inventory of homes for sale has quelled upward pressure on home prices,” said Cameron Muir, BCREA Chief Economist. A total of 54,362 MLS® residential listings were recorded in May, up 26 per cent from January on a seasonally adjusted basis. “Moderating market conditions in Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and Victoria are reducing the number of multiple offers as a greater selection of homes for sale lessons competition amongst home buyers,” added Muir. Year-to-date, BC residential sales dollar volume increased 50 per cent to $17.5 billion, compared to the same period last year. Residential unit sales rose 31 per cent to 34,619 year-to-date, while the average MLS® residential price climbed 14 per cent to $505,468 over the same period. For the complete news release, including detailed statistics, follow this link:www.bcrea.bc.ca/news_room/2010-05.pdf. Thursday, April 15, 2010 Home Lisitings Reach All-Time HighArticle written by Steve Ladurantaye, Globe and Mail...
The Canadian realestate market reignited in March, with the number of new listings skyrocketing even as the number of sales and average prices crept toward all-time highs.
February data from the Canadian Real Estate Association showed sales and prices moderating as supply began to creep back into the market, but March numbers suggest Canadians are feverishly jumping into the market to sidestep tougher mortgage requirements in effect Monday April 19 as well as to avoid new taxes being introduced in Ontario and British Columbia in June.
There were 97,663 homes put up for sale last month, a 20-per-cent jump from the previous high set in March 2008. A total of 233,402 listings have been booked since the beginning of the year, the most for any first quarter on record.
New listings are important because they can help moderate sharp price increases that occur in a sellers' market as buyers are forced to compete for what little inventory is available. That hasn't happened yet, however, with sellers still in control in most of the country.
The national average price also spiked in March, hitting $340,920 – just $300 short of the all-time high reached last October. Compared to a year ago, the average price has gained 17.6 per cent. CREA said 49,256 homes were sold, the second highest for any March and 40.8 per cent higher than March 2008.
“Negotiations still favour sellers during the home buying process in a number of major Canadian housing markets,” said Georges Pahud, the association's president. “[However,] the rise in new listings mean that buyers may shop around more before making an offer.”
In the first quarter, seasonally adjusted sales hit 130,072 homes, the fourth highest level on record. That's a 3.4-per-cent decrease from the fourth quarter, when a sizzling market spurred talk of a bubble among economists and pushed the Federal government to enact tougher mortgage rules to ensure consumers would be able to afford their mortgages should interest rates rise.
Sales activity in Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland & Labrador rose to new records in the first quarter, but the gains were moderated by a sharp drop in sales in British Columbia as consumers began to be priced out of the market.
“The erosion of housing affordability is crimping activity in some of Canada's priciest markets in the lower mainland of British Columbia,” said CREA chief economist Gregory Klump.
“Higher mortgage interest rates and the rise in new listings may also soon reduce some of the urgency to purchase in Toronto. Sales activity in British Columbia and Ontario is expected to ease over the second half of 2010 once the HST comes into effect, pulling national activity lower. Rising supply and lower activity will take the steam out of the pricing environment following upbeat home sales this spring.”
Thursday, March 25, 2010 Real-estate markets should become ‘more subdued’ after hot springCategories:Buyers,Market Statistics,Market Stats,Market Update,Mortgage,Mortgages,Vancouver Real Estate VANCOUVER — Canada’s real estate markets should remain heated through the spring, fuelled by generationally low mortgage rates, before settling into “more subdued” conditions as those rates rise, says the latest forecast from Scotia Economics.
Scotia Economics senior economist Adrienne Warren said the last decade saw “the strongest decade of real price appreciation in at least 50 years,” which will require an extended period for the economy to catch up with job creation and wage increases.
“If people were looking back at the last decade thinking that was normal, well it wasn’t normal, it was an exceptional decade,” Warren said in an interview.
Right now, she said, buyers are “bombarded by news headlines saying, and I think they’re correct,” that rates have hit bottom and will go higher, which is “adding a sense of urgency” to the market.
Listings of new properties, however, have not kept pace with this surge in buying, Warren said, and the result is bidding wars for properties that have pushed average prices to test “new highs, both for new and resale homes.”
Warren estimates that nationally, average prices are about 10 to 15 per cent above their underlying “fair value,” with some western markets likely more out of line.
“We haven’t broken it down for specific markets, but I would say there’s probably a little bit of a larger overvaluation in some western markets that had bigger run-ups [in prices],” Warren said, “so that would probably apply to Vancouver.”
After a sharp fall-off in sales and prices during the recession, Warren said Metro Vancouver saw an equally sharp bounce back.
The dip in prices for Vancouver barely shows up in the annualized pricing data Warren cites in her global real estate trends report.
Metro Vancouver showed an average home price of $592,441 in 2009 following the downturn, which was negligibly lower than the $593,767 average price of 2008. Already in the opening months of 2010, Vancouver’s average price has hit $630,028.
The Metro Vancouver market, Warren said, does tend to retain high prices because of its unique geographic constraints, which makes the region “the least affordable market [in Canada] as well.”
Warren said she expects mortgage rates to remain relatively low and that, so long as the economic recovery continues, Canada will not experience the conditions that would spark a correction of real estate prices.
She forecasts Canada will see a “normal adjustment period,” in which property prices remain relatively flat for a significant period while other aspects of the economy improve.
Warren’s forecast anticipates that Canadians will focus more on paying down debt in the coming years, a period during which a strong Canadian dollar will also restrain the economy.
She also expects the growth in new households to be slower through the coming decade than it was during the previous decade.
Article by Derrick Penner, Vancouver Sun Categories: | Buyers | Buyers. Sellers | General | Housing | Market Statistics | Market Stats | Market Update | Mortgage | Mortgages | News | Olympics | Sellers | Vancouver | Vancouver East Real Estate | Vancouver Real Estate | Video
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