Second worst August since 1998 | Vancouver Condo Info

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.

Total days 19 Days elapsed so far 3 Weekends / holidays 3 Days missing 0 Days remaining 16 7 Calendar Day Moving Average: Sales 80 7 Calendar Day Moving Average: Listings 288 SALES Sales so far 237 Projection for rest of month (using 7day MA) 1272 Projected month end total 1509 NEW LISTINGS Listings so far 981 Projection for rest of month (using 7day MA) 4604 Projected month end total 5585 Sell-list so far 24.2% Projected month-end sell-list 27.0% MONTHS OF INVENTORY Inventory as of September 5, 2012 18378 Current MoI at this sales pace 12.18

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fixie guy

10 years ago

30 jesse Says: “It’s not cherry-picking, it’s following all areas simultaneously and consistently….”

The overall market is also a consistent measure.

patriotz

@N:
What I was disagreeing with was the part I quoted, that is:

“Another thing that making a load non-discharagble does is shift the burden of evaluation from the lender to the borrower.”

Vancouver

sorry jesse, I always knew you were right. It’s just that I have this inferiority complex condition.. I get this uncontrollable urge to cynically, forcefully disagree with all the facts.. so that people will stop and pay attention to me… for once…

Where am I… Is this real life..? ok now… I have two fingers..no..four fingers… I can’t see anything… arRHHH!! I feel funny… had I been trolling this forum?
last thing I remembered? why I was having a cool-aid drink that the awfully nice realtor made for me.. Wait a minute…

bearacha

Ban Van.

Van

jesse – everyone knows you are wrong!

jesse

So remind me why are people expecting a sales surge in September? It only happened once in the past 14 years, where sales were 16% higher than August. Most of the time sales were about the same.

Romeo Jordan

Sellers (and McLovin) suck ass!

@patriotz:

“In general terms, making bankruptcy harder to get does not make borrowers more cautious – especially with respect to mortgage lending – because they never think they’re going to be unable to repay, i.e. they don’t rationally evaluate possible outcomes.”

Yes, that is precisely what I said. But then, if I said that real estate in Vancouver is overpriced, I have a feeling you would find a way to disagree with that too.

“People are paying attention.”
More like idiots are.

ScubaSteve

Updated image showing sales stats (for 2012/2011/2011)

http://i50.tinypic.com/2j5yrg4.gif

GNFINGR

Wow 72 thumbs up for paul in 1 hour! People are paying attention.

UnagiDon

“Why Brokers Study Chinese”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/realestate/big-deal-courting-chinese-buyers.html

Conrad

All my posts disappear so fast. Vote this up if you like big boobs

Thanks but no thanks. I’d rather satisfy myself.

I’m excited, the great crash is underway.

McLovin

Romeo, free for you, $40 for the trolls!

19000 by the 20th, 20000 not until October, slow melt unfolding (at the moment).

McLovin, have you dropped your prices yet?

VHB

Can we hold onto that 12 for the MoI? Stay tuned!

paulb

New Listings 290
Price Changes 124
Sold Listings 80
TI:18378

http://www.paulboenisch.com

VMD

@VHB: It’s understandable that any benchmark will have its inaccuracies in attempting to capture the ‘real’ trend. In days like now, when the sample size (especially individual neighborhood stats) continues to shrink, even the good ol’ median values become less reliable. We can only hope REBGV’s intricate HPI formula can more accurately (than say, median price) portray the price movement. I don’t tend to believe in wilful conspiracies by the real estate boards to manipulate HPI prices, but I still have some reservation on their reliability/accuracy – especially when the media base their stories so heavily on them. It’s probably just an isolated case, but in the most recent stats pkg, Whistler apartments still show 3-year price change as +80.2%,and 5-year price change as +72.8%. Median price (Jan-Aug) was $229,000 this year, -17% vs 2009($276,150) and -29% vs 2007($320,500). Granted… Read more »

AG Sage

Drat, I can’t find the original quote from circa 2006 California, but my Rule # 10 of bubbles popping is when someone says: “But what about the value of all the houses that *aren’t* for sale?!?”

Eddie

Numbers anyone? I need my fix dammit!

Don’t matter Minions, the real estate slow down is now talk of the town, what’s to turn the tide?

McLovin dropping his prices?

I think not.

@boogeybear: “The real estate “market” is only a fraction of the total housing. It doesn’t matter that there are more dwellings today than there was a decade ago. The real estate market in relation to total housing is very small. Under 5 percent of the total housing stock.”

If the real estate market is, say, 5% of the total number of houses, and the total number of houses increases by 10% then the real estate market also increases by 10%.

canadian

@VMD:

I think chipman goofed up. He is showing 882 listings between both fv and gv, which seems to be astronomically high. either which way I am a happy person as sell/list is real low in both the cases

Bubble? What Bubble?