Canadian Real Estate Wealth
Prices may be recovering, but buyers in British Columbia just aren’t as enthusiastic as they once were.
“BC home sales in August remained unchanged from July, on a seasonally adjusted basis,” said Cameron Muir, BCREA Chief Economist. “Strong economic conditions are underpinning demand.
However, rising home prices combined with upward pressure on mortgage interest rates is expected to temper demand over the balance of the year.”
Unit sales are down year-to-date in 67% of British Columbia’s markets, according to the British Columbia Real Estate Association, with Vancouver seeing the most precipitous decline at -20.3% YTD.
Overall, the province has seen a total of 73,267 sales this year, down 15% YTD.
The average price of a home in the province — $706,839 — is also down this year by 1.1% YTD.
Dollar volume is also down.
“Year-to-date, BC residential sales dollar volume was down 15.9% to $51.8 billion, when compared with the same period in 2016,” BCREA said in a release. “Residential unit sales declined 15.0 % to 73,267units, while the average MLS residential price was down 1.1%to $706,839.”
The silver lining, however, is that the average price is up in 11 of 12 of BC markets, with Vancouver experiencing the only drop in average price.
It should be noted that these declines could be the result of Vancouver’s foreign buyer tax, which was implemented in August of last year. That, and the market has obviously been impacted by last year’s federal mortgage rule changes as well.
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