Vancouver Condo Info

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.

Well 2008 has come to a close, and if you’re counting on Vancouver real estate as a ticket to riches it hasn’t been the best of years.  But DO NOT FRET, for I have discovered a simple way for investors to feel a little bit better about the direction house prices took in 2008. Do not look directly at a chart or graph of house prices, instead only view them through a rear view mirror:

There! That’s not quite so bad now is it?

(Yes, we used this same trick when comparing the Vancouver BC / Syndey Australia markets.)

Happy New Year Everyone!

The headline is ‘sales drop forces realtors to cancel 09 conference‘.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) held a version of the conference in the spring, but in a letter to prospective attendees and exhibitors, board president Dave Watt said a careful review of its sponsorship model led the executive to postpone the next edition until 2010.

“With REBGV members and prospective sponsors/exhi-bitors currently facing economic challenges, we believe forgoing the 2009 edition of our event is a prudent and responsible measure at this time,” Watt said in the e-mail.

When contacted, Watt declined to offer further comment on the cancellation.

Lower Mainland real estate markets hit the down stroke of their cycle this year, which has meant declining sales and falling prices.

Also in the news today, Richmond is the latest area of the lower mainland to see real estate prices drop lower than they were this time last year:

But it could be worse. You could be trying to sell a house on Vancouver’s west side where detached, attached and apartment properties are being sold respectively for 18.5, 19 and 19.6 per cent less than 2007.

Coun. Derek Dang, a Richmond realtor of 23 years, said it was only a matter of time before the city’s real estate bubble burst.

“It’s not that surprising as we were always going to get caught up like the rest of the world,” Dang said.

“Ultimately, we’re all part of the one big worldwide crisis. We’re good, but we’re not immune.

“It’s an international market we’re dealing in these days and when the global financial market gets into trouble it’s bound to affect us.”

The benchmark price for a Single Family Home in greater Vancouver is now $666,525. Vancouver West is seeing the biggest drops in detached house and town homes.  Both of those benchmark prices are now down at least 18.5% year over year.  Overall the benchmark house price for Greater Vancouver has dropped $104,725 since May of 2008.  That’s a few free cars worth for those keeping track.  Thanks to cashisking and gadwin for pointing out these numbers.

Post any other interesting things you find in the stats package in the comments section below and I’ll update this post when I get a chance.

This bit of news courtesy of local Realtor Paul Boenisch who shares market statistics on his website. November 2008 just saw a very sharp drop in the average sales price of single family homes:

Prices are falling sharply. Believe it or not the average SFH price fell 10% this month. Yes in 1 month. $745,778 for November v. $825,206 for October. The average has dipped 19% since March. It will be interesting to see if the benchmarks also make a dramatic drop.

2008 - Vancouver House Prices Down almost 10% from the peak.

According to statistics released by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, the benchmark price for a single family home in Metro Vancouver is down 9.8% from the May 2008 price peak and down 4.7% from the October 2007 price so far.  From an article in the Vancouver Sun.

Greater Vancouver saw MLS sales of 1,364 units in October compared with 3,028 in the same month a year ago.

Single-family home sales across the region dropped to 493 units in October from 1,368 in October, 2007. Condominium sales were also down substantially to 493 units from 1,133 in the same month a year ago.

Dave Watt, the Greater Vancouver board’s president, said sales are not keeping pace with B.C.’s current economic conditions with low unemployment and stable interest rates.

“That’s a direct result of a loss of consumer confidence in the overall market,” Watt said.

In the Fraser Valley, the detached house price hit $513,892 in October, down 6.5 per cent from May and 0.6 per cent below the average price of October, 2007.

MLS sales of 768 in the valley were 48 per cent below sales levels of the same month a year ago.

Here’s an open question for discussion and a bit of a scientific experiment.  I noticed a recent story on the UBC election stock market and that reminded me of a few other stories I’ve seen on prediction markets and their accuracy.  It turns out that in many cases the aggregate of a groups prediction or estimation is more accurate than individual experts, particularly when money is at stake.

Last month we saw year-over-year price loss in many areas of the lower mainland.  These drops were seen across all types of housing: condos, townhouses and detached homes, but the most dramatic price drop was seen in Port Moody which saw an astounding year over year price decline of 20.4% for the benchmark price of a detached house.  That number is so large, I initially thought this may be a typo or error, but it has remained in place throughout numerous news stories and the original REBGV housing price index table.

So lets do a little experiment.  Lets see if the readers of this site, as a group, can accurately predict which area of the REBGV will see the largest percentage decline in the benchmark price of a detached home.  To clarify: Which area of the lower mainland will show the largest monthly house price decline during the month of October 2008?  Vote below and when October REBGV benchmark stats are release we’ll see how accurate we’ve been:

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exx just posted this link, looks like its worth its own post.  The Vancouver sun is reporting that the house price drop in September was big enough to bring us below 2007 levels in most markets across the Lower Mainland.  Prices in Greater Vancouver have dropped 5.8% since May and are now 1.6% lower than September 2007.

The year-over-year price changes vary by market from up 3.6 per cent in Richmond where the benchmark was $$754,481 to down 20.4 per cent in Port Moody where the benchmark was $619,891 in September.

Total sales of all property types recorded through the Multiple Listing Service were 1,585 across the REBGV area in September, down 43 per cent from September a year ago.

REBGV September new listings, meanwhile, were up 29 per cent to 6,142 from the same month a year ago.

“After five years of unprecedented increases, housing prices are beginning to realign,” Dave Watt, REBGV president, said in a news release.

Any thoughts or comments on this news?

Recently we posted an updated spreadsheet compiled by YLTNboomerang that tracks downtown waterfront townhouse listings and price changes (here’s the original post).  Monterey just wrote in that he’s doing the same thing for downtown westend condos listed under $650k and he’s made that data available to all of us here in this excel spreadsheet.

-click here to download the xls document-

Here’s Monterey’s comments on this data:

First, I want to thank fellow blogger YLTNBoomerang who inspired me to create this list.  I live in the west end, and am interested in a two bedroom apartment.  I don’t want to buy something and spend the rest of my life paying it off, so I have been looking at price ranges that I would consider affordable.  $500K tops, plus a little cushion to follow the imminent downward trend, and my upper monitoring range is $650K.

(more…)

Yep, Vancouver house prices are dropping.  The REBGV benchmark price is down about 4 percent since May 2008.  I guess that means we only need another few percent to meet ‘equilibrium’ according to this recent Sauder study on overpriced Canadian real estate.

Interestingly enough that Sauder study compares asking rents from Craigslist, so another option to reach ‘equilibrium’ would be just to post a bunch of much higher asking rents on Craigslist. That way we wouldn’t have to deal with the indignity of dropping house prices.

In the meanwhile, potential first time home buyers watch prices drop and hope for affordability.

Got a better idea of what you could buy with that money?  Leave a comment below!