It is good that there is a strong demand for condominiums and townhomes given that the year for real estate in Vancouver had a rough and slow start. However, there is a shortage of residential property listings, which really gave a challenging effect in Metro Vancouver’s housing market during the whole month of March.
As always, we compare the performance of this year from last year to get the bigger picture of how things are going in the market. Last year, there was a record-breaking sales of 5,173 in March compared to the 3,579 residential property sales this March 2017. While that is a 30.8% decrease from March 2016’s sales, it’s a 47.6% increase compared to February 2017. And this is actually good because it showed a 7.9 per cent above the 10-year sales average for the month.
According to Jill Oudil, the president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, while the comparison of performance from last year is notable, it is worth highlighting that there is an obvious increase of demand every month for condominiums and townhomes. The behavior wherein sellers are still thinking twice of putting their properties in the market make it somewhat a good competition for homebuyers.
The total of new listings for detached, attached, and apartment properties in Metro Vancouver were 4,762 this March 2017. It’s another point of decrease if we compare it to the 6,278 units listed last March 2016. But again, it’s a definite increase from the 3,666 properties listed just last February 2017. Currently, we have a total of 7,586 properties listed for sale on MLS system in Metro Vancouver. It’s good enough in a sense that if we compare it to March 2016’s 7,358 listings, that’s already an increase of 3.1%, but a decrease of 0.1% from February 2017’s 7,594 listings.
There is a 15-point increase over February for sales to active listings ratio for March 2017. That’s about 47.2%. Analysts say that downward pressure on home prices happen when the ratio dips below 12% for a certain period of time. On the other hand, there is an upward pressure when it goes beyond the 20$ mark over several months. Oudil furthered that the performance of home prices will be increasing as long as there is sufficient supply.
Additionally, it’s important to note that the MLS Home Price Index composite benchmark price for all residential properties is at $919,300. This definitely shows a 0.8% decrease over the past 6 months and 1.4% increase compared to February 2017. There is a 46.1% decrease of sales from the detached properties in March 2016. It significantly shows a 5.0% decrease over the past 6 months and a 1% increase just from February this year. A decrease of 18.3% this year for apartment properties were seen where we are comparing it to last March 2016’s sales of 2,252. It represents a 5.2% increase over the past 6 months and a 1.2% from February 2017. Lastly, the sales for attached property is 588, which is an equivalent to 25.2% decrease compared to the sales from March 2016, and a 1.3% increase from the last 6 months. Again, we see a significant 1.4% increase from February 2017.