The Olympic Impact: Was there one?

Now, when I question the Olympic impact, please be advised that I am not at all ignoring the fabulous affect the Olympics have had on our city. Quite the contrary actually, as I believe that the experience was extraordinary and it was amazing to see how the city embraced the event. I feel lucky to have been a part of what will surely be remembered as the best party Vancouver has ever hosted.However, when it comes to real estate, it appears that the short-term impact of the Olympics was almost non-existent.

As you can plainly see in the market statistics on the next page, February market activity kept trucking along, oblivious to the Olympic distractions, to the tune of a 67% increase in the number of sales compared to February of last year and 29% over January of this year. This seems to fly in the face of the common expectation, which was that the market would effectively stall while the Olympics were in town. Moving forward, with inventory levels creeping up to match consumer demand and mortgage rates remaining at all time lows, it is hard to imagine that the market will not keep rolling on through the second quarter of this year as well.

Of course, the long term impact of the Olympics on Vancouver remains to be seen, but February appears to show something that I have believed all along: the Vancouver real estate market has not been and will not be greatly affected by the Olympics. There are far more relevant factors in determining the dtirection of the local market, which include immigration into Vancouver, mortgage rates, pent-up demand and employment rates. These have been the primary factors at play pre-Olympics and remain the primary factors post-Olympics. Sure, the international exposure was nice, but does it really change the housing market? In my opinion, no... at least not this year.