The REBGV has released their Vancouver stats package for August 2012 and it’s a bit of a downer for the true believer.

Sales down, prices down, lots of use of the term ‘buyers market’.

In fact the home sales plunge just made last month the second worst August since 1998.

The group’s composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Greater Vancouver is $609,500 which is down 0.5% from a year ago and 1.1% from July.

Supply seems to be slowing with new listings for detached, attached and apartment properties 4,044 in August for a 13.7% decline from a year ago. New listings were down 15.8% from July.

At 17,567, the total number of residential property listings on the MLS was up 13.8% from a year ago but down 2.8% from last month.

Courtesy of Good Format, here’s the month drops and what that number looks like annualized:

            MLS® Home Price Index  

           July 2012     Aug 2012   Chg(%)  Annualized(%)
Detached     950,200     942,100     0.86       10.32
Attached     468,700     462,300     1.38       16.61
Apartment    374,300     370,100     1.13       13.61

Scubasteve shares some of the worst hit areas for prices:

DETACHED
-3.7% = Richmond
-3.7% = Vancouver West
-1.3% = Maple Ridge

CONDOS
-8.0% = Burnaby South
-7.9% = Port Coquitlam
-6.4% = Burnaby East

TOWNHOUSE
-8.8% = Tsawwassen
-8.3% = Burnaby North
-4.5% = Maple Ridge

And the worst areas for sales:

1) West Vancouver (-65.6%)
Aug/12 = 34 sales
Aug/11 = 96 sales

2) Burnaby (-47.5%)
Aug/12 = 174 sales
Aug/11 = 331 sales

3) Coquitlam (-41.6%)
Aug/12 = 122 sales
Aug/11 = 209 sales

4) Richmond (-31.2%)
Aug/12 = 179 sales
Aug/11 = 260 sales

5) Vancouver West (-31.0%)
Aug/12 = 362 sales
Aug/11 = 524 sales

6) Vancouver East (-29.6%)
Aug/12 = 169 sales
Aug/11 = 240 sales

7) North Vancouver (-29.0%)
Aug/12 = 113 sales
Aug/11 = 159 sales

Read his full comment here.

If we don’t see a flood of listings in the Fall then that will help to let some of the downward pressure off the market, but there isn’t much looking up in the outlook.  We’re now a couple of months into the new mortgage rules that have taken out some first time buyers and put pressure on $1 million houses.

With housing affordability in Vancouver at a record low it’s only going to get trickier to find a buyer unless we get a new flood of credit or higher paying jobs.