Vancouver Condo Info

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) benchmark price for a home in Vancouver edged up in the first month of 2008 - the new benchmark prices are as follows:

Single Family Home:  $742,490 (+ $12,091)
Attached / Townhouse:  $462,627  (+ $5,686)
Apartment / Condo:   $378,336 (+ $757)

Full stats are available from Paul Boenisch at nvcondos.ca.

In the Fraser Valley prices are down in many areas compared to December 2007, but still up year over year.  An increase in listings has pushed the Fraser Valley into a ‘buyers market’ according to the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board.  Detailed analysis of the Fraser Valley market can be found at the Financial Planning and Personal Sanity blog.

So far the Vancouver real estate market has been remarkably resilient - recession fears, a writers strike, complaints about affordability and markets dropping around the world have not dampened speculation in the Vancouver market.  Will we see a change in 2008 or can we expect to see higher prices in the next 12 months?

Paul has given us a gift that keeps on giving with his new web site. If you haven’t seen it yet do yourself a favor and check it out - there’s an incredible treasure trove of information he’s made available including up to date statistics on details like average selling prices and days on market. He’s also sharing inventory charts for all sub-areas of Greater Vancouver going back 3 years. This will be an ideal resource for watching the market in detail. Go check it out and say hello on his new blog.

WTF? We had great volume in July, lots of sales, but the benchmark house price didn’t go up at all. In fact at a benchmark price of $714,810 detached houses actually lost $905 in the month, hardly enough to get excited about, but shouldn’t prices be going up in a hot hot market?

Those at the lower end are still doing their part: Condos are up a healthy $4k from the previous month, while townhouses are up $5k, so what happened to the houses?

One more step up the mountain - the Benchmark price for a detached home in Vancouver hit $715,715 last month according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. Here’s my standard short term graph, we’re one month short of a year on it:

Townhomes and apartments were up as well - according to the REBGV this was the “second best June on record”. The attached benchmark hit $443,060 while the benchmark condo now goes for $360,469:

Last year prices saw a high point hit in September - Where will this years peak be?

Thanks to Agent Will for the stats package.

Wow. Just wow. The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver just released their benchmark stats for May 2007 and prices are up again - a record price of $711,245 for the detached benchmark. Have we attained the least affordable city in North America status yet?

And Condos and Townhomes? Also up:

Now who says thats a bubble?

Stats from agentwill who adds “I have no idea when this will end. All I know is that despite so much logic against these rising prics, well, it ain’t ending.”

Freako added some quick numbers in a previous post that I’m going to repost here:

“Based on the latest ING rates and 20% down, that results in payments of $3,536.29 before taxes, maintenance or repairs.”

“How is this remotely possible? i punched the the mortgage amount into ING’s “how much can I borrow calculator”, and the required income is $143,000. What percentile of households earn that?”

..and to round this post up reductimat sends in this link to a scotiabank study that forsees a slowing in the Canadian Housing market, but ‘certainly not a bust’.

There’s an interesting article in The Star about discount brokers in the real estate business and the impact they may have on the cost of buying and selling.

While other industries, such as travel agents and stock brokerages, have gone the discount route, the real estate industry has largely held steadfast.

Realtors have been successful at holding their commissions at a standard 5 per cent in recent years, although that is already down from 6 per cent a decade or more ago.

But in a market where homes are selling in record numbers and at record prices, some consumers are wondering why commissions are still so high in the real estate business.

They also mention the Competition bureaus investigation of the Canadian Real Estate Association:

The Canadian Competition Bureau, meanwhile, is investigating the Canadian Real Estate Association to see if the CREA’s guidelines discourage discount brokerage houses from using the Multiple Listing Service, which the association owns.

CREA officials say they are simply protecting their trademark.

I’ve noticed a lot of discount broker signs on condos recently, I wonder how much of an impact they are having here in Vancouver. As the article points out - in a hot market it may be easy to sell through a discount broker, but what happens when the market slows?

So what do you think- Are discount brokers the way of the future and would you feel comfortable using them to sell a property in a slower market?

Well it looks like we’ve got another strong start to the spring season, at least when it comes to the Real Estate Boards benchmark price for a single family home. I don’t have all the numbers yet, but theres a short story in the Sun, and here’s my short-term chart:

So it looks like the sub-prime mortage meltdown in the US hasn’t fazed this market yet - Not only that, we’ve got more listings, less sales and prices are still going up! It really is different this time!

UPDATE: Here are the March benchmark prices for the GVRD, and the price charts for townhouses and apartments - Everythings up this month, it must be springtime!

GVRD Benchmark prices, March 2007:
Detached: $682,173
Attached: $428,299
Apartment: $349,373

Short term housing charts, Attached & Apartments:

Thanks to Agent Will for the March stats package. This is a very peculiar market, at these prices buyers must be counting on continued appreciation.

There’s an article in the National Post titled something grand about going small. Canadians are living in ever-larger houses, except in vancouver where they’re living in ever-smaller condos. The example in the article is counselor Gordon Prices’ west end apartment that is around 1100 square feet “which makes it about half the size of the average Canadian home.”

Vancouverites are used to making do with less. Most have no choice; the city is sandwiched between water and mountains, and real estate here is astronomically priced, the highest in Canada. Traditional single-family homes — even small bungalows — cannot be had for less than $500,000, making them unattainable for even moderately high-income earners.

Figures released last week indicate that detached bungalows in Vancouver sell for an average of $758,000; in Toronto, they sell for an average of $387,744.

Other Canadians may wonder how people in Vancouver could possibly cope inside such small homes; Mr. Price’s apartment is actually a generous size, by West End standards. And his neighbourhood has one of the highest population densities in North America, with about 20,000 people per square kilometre. That is more than four times the density of Montreal, one of Canada’s oldest and most congested cities.

I’m glad they point out that 1100 square feet is actually a large west end apartment - interesting that they don’t mention the sub-500 square foot ultra tiny condo’s that are going in to many new towers downtown.

Wow. Not only did February see a stop to the dropping benchmark price, it leaped back up to a new peak featuring the number of the beast: $666,983

I haven’t seen stats for apartments and townhomes yet, but I’ll add those graphs when they’re available.

Update: here they are, craziness in every sector. Buy now before everyone is priced out forever.

Stats are from agentwill, he’ll email you the full stats, but I just grabbed the February benchmark numbers from his post at Realestatetalks.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver have released their stats from January 2007 and according to them the ‘benchmark’ quality adjusted price of a detached house in Vancouver continues to drop. Here’s my updated graph of the REBGV benchmark price including the most recent price peak of September 2007:

Graphs can be deceptive, and this one looks like we’ve lost a lot of value. We are about $20,000 down since September, and below my July 2006 start date, but in the big picture we’re still way way up. If you’re unfamiliar with the Vancouver housing price run-up you should check out the Vancouver Housing Blog for a bigger picture.

So which is more likely to happen? Prices continue to drop to get more in line with rental values, rent prices increase by 200% to catch up with real estate prices, or a combination of the two?

Note also: last month detached houses took the greatest price hit - attached (townhouse) prices are nearly at the September peak, while apartments (condos) are also up from last month. Whats happening there? Are people ‘priced out’ of the detached market and buying condos and townhouses instead? Why are we seeing this steady price drops in single family homes right now?