The second wave of COVID-19 hasn’t put a damper on Powell River’s real estate market.
Powell River-Sunshine Coast Real Estate Board president, Neil Frost, says the region is coming off a record September and October.
“Sales have been very strong the past few months,” he added. “November was quite strong as well – we’re just waiting for the final numbers on it to come in.
Frost said 50 percent of the buyers are coming from outside of the area with most of those purchasing single family homes.
“So they’re becoming residents of Powell River, moving into our community, becoming taxpayers in our community,” Frost said.
“COVID certainly has presented challenges in the practice of real estate, but I would say that overall the exodus from the urban areas have definitely put a spotlight on Powell River (and) has benefited our real estate market… definitely our sellers, at any rate.”
The biggest challenge facing the local market right now is a lack of inventory.
Frost said there simply isn’t enough homes on the market to satisfy the demand. He noted that it’s driving prices higher.
Board-wide, the average price of a single-family home was $493,586 at the end of October, which is nearly 10 percent higher than the same time last year.
While the current travel restrictions on the Vancouver Coastal Health region has slowed the market, Frost says they’re still seeing competing offers, and “we’re experiencing the typical winter slowdown a little bit.”
“But we’re still seeing a lot of inquiries from out-of-time,” he added.
Frost believes the open spaces and lifestyle offered in the qathet Regional District is also a huge draw.
“After the first wave, where people were stuck at home, or stuck in a condo, or cohabiting situation, with no yard, nowhere to go in an urban environment, they look at the big open spaces here, the larger properties, the availability of recreational spaces, and they’re getting out of their condo in the city and coming here to a little house and a better living situation.”
Frost would like to see more housing and new construction come online in the new year.
“There’s still a demand and I expect that to continue into spring, summer of 2021,” he said. “Prior to the pandemic we had many people wanting to retire here. We’ve got all these people that want to come from out of province: buyers from Alberta, buyers from Ontario that haven’t been able to or have chosen not to come over the past few months. It’s not just the Lower Mainland which is where the majority of our out-of-town buyers are coming from.”
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.
