The Metro Vancouver housing market showed more signs of life in February, according to new data from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV), with activity picking up from the hard-to-beat lows of January.
In February, REBGV registered a total of 1,808 home sales, which is a solid 76.9% increase compared to the 1,022 sold in January, but is notably 47.2% below February 2022 sales numbers, and 33% below the 10-year average for February.
February also saw 3,467 new listings, which was again an increase over January (5.2%), but a decrease compared to February 2022 (-36.6%), which saw 5,471 new listings.
The number of total listings in Metro Vancouver inched up to 7,868, a 5.2% increase compared to the 7,478 in January, as well as a 16.7% increase compared to the 6,742 in February 2022.
“February listing data show a continued reluctance among prospective home sellers to engage in Metro Vancouver’s housing market, leading to below-average sales activity,” REBGV said. “It’s hard to sell what you don’t have,” added REBGV Director of Economics and Data Analytics Andrew Lis.
The Market Lean
For those who do want to engage with the housing market in Metro Vancouver, or are at least considering it, is this a better time to be a buyer or seller?
Using the aforementioned statistics, we can determine the sales-to-active listings ratio, which serves as a quantitative indicator of whether the market is leaning towards buyers or sellers. The market is viewed as favoring buyers when the ratio is below 12%, favoring sellers when it is above 20%, and considered balance when in between.
With 1,808 sales in February and 7,868 active listings, the sales-to-active-listings ratio is now 22.9%. After the ratio was at just 13.7% in January, this is likely a sign that the market is now favoring sellers.
Diving a bit deeper, the sales-to-active listings ratio was drastically different across the three residential property types. Single-detached homes had a ratio of 16.8%, while condominiums had a ratio of 25.8% and townhouses had a ratio of 30.1%, indicating that it’s better to be a seller in the condominium and townhouse market now than it is in the single-detached home market.
(REBGV)
One other quantitative indicator of the market lean is the sales-to-new-listings ratio, where a ratio below 40% is considered a buyers’ market, 55% or higher as a sellers’ market, and a ratio in between viewed as a balanced market.
With 1,808 overall home sales and 3,467 new listings in Greater Vancouver in February, the sales-to-new-listings ratio is 52.1%. In January, that ratio was 30.9%, confirming movement towards sellers.
“For prospective buyers, the below-average sales activity is allowing inventory to accumulate, which is keeping market conditions from straying too deeply into sellers’ market territory, particularly in the more affordably-priced segments,” Lis said.
The composite residential benchmark price in Metro Vancouver is now at $1,123,400 — 9.3% lower than the benchmark price in February 2022, but a 1.1% increased when compared to January 2023.
“While we continue to expect home price trends to show year-over-year declines for a few more months, current data and market activity suggest pricing is firming up,” added Lis.
By property type, the benchmark price is now $1,813,100 for single-detached homes, $1,038,500 for townhouses, and $732,200 for condominiums. All three represent decreases compared to this time last year, but are slight increases — 0.7%, 1.8%, and 1.6%, respectively — over January.
Including all residential types, the benchmark price in every sub-area of Greater Vancouver saw a year-over-year decrease, with Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge seeing the steepest declines, at 19.5% and 19.0%. On the other end of the spectrum, Richmond saw the smallest decline in the past year, with the composite benchmark price dropping only 4.0%.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
