Just as budding flowers are a sure sign of spring, so are the brightly-coloured ‘for sale’ signs that typically dot Okanagan lawns around this time.
However, in real estate this year, while March roared in like a lion, it went out like a lamb.
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“It looked like we were going into a very strong spring market with possibly some price appreciation and now it’s reduced quite a bit,” realtor Steve Wright said.
Despite the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, the volume of sales in March from Revelstoke to Peachland was up by nearly five per cent from last year, according to statistics from the Okanagan Mainline Real Estate Board.
“We did finish March quite well, but most of that activity was initiated before the pandemic hit,” Okanagan Mainline Real Estate Board president Michael Loewen said.
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Realtors throughout the Okanagan are adapting and shifting online to sell homes through virtual open houses and video tours to accommodate the restrictions brought about by social distancing, he added.
Wright said that while vacant homes and new construction are still relatively easy to show potential buyers, he isn’t doing any open houses or showing homes with seniors or people with compromised health systems.
“And tenanted homes are a challenge unless, of course, it’s an investor that wants to take the tenant, because the premier talked about no evictions,” he said.
Wright said that while he is still showing some homes, he’s following a new set of protocols.
“We have to have signed forms declaring they’re in good health. We have to know who’s coming to the house, and then we go prep the house,” he said.
“We wipe down all the surfaces that they might be touching.”
“We have signs on the doors…we have all the lights turned on already,” he said.
Loewen said it’s difficult to forecast the impact that the economic uncertainty and social distancing measures prompted by the pandemic will have on the market.
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“But I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a 40 per cent drop in our market activity in the foreseeable future,” he said.
However, realtors are still looking ahead to the other side of the pandemic, Wright said.
“We’re going to have pent-up demand. We’re going to have very low interest rates, and we’re going to have people that want to return to some sort of normalcy in their lives.”
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.
MONTREAL – The Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers says Montreal-area home sales rose 9.3 per cent in August compared with the same month last year, with levels slightly higher than the historical average for this time of year.
The association says home sales in the region totalled 2,991 for the month, up from 2,737 in August 2023.
The median price for all housing types was up year-over-year, led by a six per cent increase for the price of a plex at $763,000 last month.
The median price for a single-family home rose 5.2 per cent to $590,000 and the median price for a condominium rose 4.4 per cent to $407,100.
QPAREB market analysis director Charles Brant says the strength of the Montreal resale market contrasts with declines in many other Canadian cities struggling with higher levels of household debt, lower savings and diminishing purchasing power.
Active listings for August jumped 18 per cent compared with a year earlier to 17,200, while new listings rose 1.7 per cent to 4,840.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 6, 2024.
