Well the official stats are out for December 2008. How did our local Vancouver real estate market fare? You can probably detect the general direction of Vancouver house prices in the following graph:
The drop was slightly less than November ’08, falling $18,104 to a benchmark price of $648,421. So far the benchmark has dropped $122,900 from the market peak last spring.
UPDATE: Bubble lad just posted a link to this story in today’s Sun: Metro Vancouver to see deepest property price dip.
Metro Vancouver’s home prices rose the highest in Canada’s property boom and will fall the furthest in its correction, real estate firm Royal LePage has forecast. Royal LePage Real Estate Services, in its 2009 market survey forecast released Tuesday, predicted that Metro’s average home price will decline nine per cent in 2009 to $540,100 from a 2008 forecast of $593,500.
That will be almost three times deeper than the national average decline for 2009 of three per cent, which should bring the average home price down to $295,000 nationally.
Royal LePage CEO Phil Soper said that over the long term, home-price appreciation should rise in line with the rate that a city’s incomes rise. “Over the last seven years, Vancouver prices increased at a rate significantly above the underlying appreciation of people’s incomes,” Soper said in an interview.
Don’t listen to the negativity. Local incomes are irrelevant. OUR market is different,it’s fueled by a special blend of upbeat naivety and magic pony-power.
Besides, it’s only money.
