Signs installed advertising condos while tenants still living on Vancouver property

Joanne Lee – Young
The Vancouver Sun

Tenants were caught off-guard recently when giant signs advertising The Cut, a new townhome development project, were suddenly plopped in their front yard.

Charity Justrabo in front of her home at Nanaimo Street and Grandview Highway in Vancouver on Feb. 20. Photo by Arlen Redekop /PNG

Charity Justrabo and two other housemates rent an older home on the corner of Nanaimo Street and Grandview Highway in East Vancouver.

 

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They were caught off-guard recently when giant signs advertising The Cut, a new townhome development project, were suddenly plopped in their front yard.

“The person who was putting up the signs was very friendly and helpful and said, ‘I was actually told that nobody lives here,’ ” said Justrabo.

She got in touch with their landlord, which is Fabric Living, a Vancouver real estate development company. It apologized for not letting them know about the signs, sent a gift basket and the signs were removed the next morning.

Two of the signs are eight-by-eight-feet in size, and one of them is an imposing eight-by-16 feet and wraps around the property’s corner lot.

Justrabo snapped a photo and sent it to her family group chat. Her sister, who is involved with a documentary project about illegal billboards and corporate visual clutter, “really grabbed onto it in a way that maybe not everyone would have,” and she tweeted it.

 

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On Tuesday, Fabric removed the signs.

Vancouver city Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung said it’s always important to understand the specific facts of each situation.

However, the general interest in the signs can also be seen as “a symbol of those pressures in the rental market and the amount of change there has been in the City of Vancouver.”

“We do see at council that there are renters who are on month-to-month leases or even longer leases, but still are at more risk of displacement if they are in an area where there is a lot of development than if they were in a purpose-built rental.”

She advises tenants to be aware of their rights by reaching out to the city’s Renter Office.

Justrabo and her housemates had been renting the home from the longtime owner of the 2,500-square-foot, four bedroom, “single family home” that sits between the Commercial-Broadway and Renfrew SkyTrain stations. It was the kind of rental home where friends got wind of someone moving out and a vacancy being available from other friends, said Justrabo.

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Last summer, Fabric Living bought the home and a vacant lot across the street in a joint listing. That’s when the tenants started a month-to-month rent arrangement. The listing details state the current zoning, RM-12N, allows for a 3-1/2 or four-storey townhome or condo. There are also other properties on Grandview Highway that are listed for sale in a possible land assembly.

 

CEO of Fabric Living Jordan MacDonald described The Cut to Postmedia News as a project that will “bring more family oriented homes to this great neighbourhood of our city to service ‘the missing middle’.”

He said the company had told a third-party property manager that landscaping work would start on the properties so that signs could be installed, but “due to a miscommunication, only the landscaping work was communicated to the tenant by the property manager.”

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He said the signage contractor spoke of his own accord and was never provided any information by Fabric or its property manager that the property was empty.

Justrabo realizes the transformative changes that are coming into the area. After all, the lot across is vacant and there are more houses being listed for sale in potential land assemblies.

“But just talk to us like we’re people,” she said.

In describing how the signs on their front lawn had hit a nerve, the 33-year-old University of B.C. graduate student with a steady income said: “I think it’s the real lack of communication and feeling like the fact that I can’t afford a mortgage in this city really puts me down the ladder of interests.

“And, I’m someone who is stable compared to so many people in the city who don’t have a chance of that.”

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© 2022 Vancouver Sun

Pressure on Vancouver house prices continues

Ephraim Vecina
other

The trend inflames competition, real estate industry association says

A consistent dearth of supply applied upward pressure on home prices across Metro Vancouver in January, according to the region’s real estate industry association.
Data from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver showed that 4,170 homes were newly listed for sale last month, down by 6.9% annually. Active listings as of the end of January totalled 5,663 homes, representing a 31.8% decline from the same month last year.
“Our listing inventory … is less than half of what would be optimal to begin the year. As a result, hopeful home buyers have limited choice in the market today,” said Keith Stewart, economist at the REBGV. “This trend is causing fierce competition for a scarce number of homes for sale, which, in turn, increases prices.”
The benchmark residential price in Metro Vancouver went up by 18.5% year over year to reach $1.255 million, the REBGV said.
Read more: Vancouver market performance remains above historic levels
Sales activity slightly moderated by 4.4% annually for a total of 2,285 transactions in January. Despite the slowdown, last month’s sales were still 25.3% above the region’s 10-year January sales average.
“As we approach spring, we’ll keep a close eye on the impact of rising interest rates on buyers’ willingness to buy and on whether more home owners will opt to become sellers in what’s traditionally the busiest season of the year,” Stewart said. “With home prices reaching new highs in recent months, the need has never been greater for government to collaborate with the building community to expedite the creation of housing supply and provide more choice for those struggling to buy a home today.”
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Metro Vancouver’s rental vacancy rate has been chopped in half

Stefan Labbe
Western Investor

The region has the highest average rent in Canada with a two-bedroom unit at $1,824 and a two-bedroom condo at $2,498.

Rental vacancy rate now 1.2 per cent. | Thomas Winz, Getty Images

The region has the highest average rent in Canada with a two-bedroom unit at $1,824 and a two-bedroom condo at $2,498.

Vacancy rates in British Columbia’s largest urban area were cut by more than half in 2021 in a return to pre-pandemic levels, according to a new Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) report.

By dropping to a 1.2 per cent vacancy rate from 2.6 per cent in 2020, Metro Vancouver’s rental market has once again tightened in ways not seen across other large centres in Canada, found the CMHC.

“With the return of economic growth, rental demand increased faster than supply in 2021. The Vancouver rental market again faces many of the same imbalances as in 2019,” said CMHC senior specialist Eric Bond in a prepared statement.

The region continues to have the highest average rent in Canada, where last year the cost to rent an average purpose-built, two-bedroom unit hit $1,824. In the condominium rental market, a two-bedroom rental averaged $2,498.

“Our data shows that lower-income households face significant challenges finding units that they can afford,” stated the report’s analysis of Metro Vancouver’s rental market.

By comparison, Toronto’s vacancy rates rose 4.6 per cent, and in Montreal, where the average purpose-built, two-bedroom rental goes for $932, the vacancy rate held steady at 3 per cent last year. Nationally, vacancy rates held steady through 2021, a trend largely influenced by Montreal’s outsized rental stock.

The CMHC says an affordable home is one where a renter spends no more than 30 per cent of its gross income on rent. 

Using that benchmark, someone earning an average hourly wage would have to work nearly 50 hours per week in 2021 to be able to afford a two-bedroom, purpose-built rental apartment, found the CMHC. That’s up slightly from the year before. 

Lower-income people face the biggest barriers in finding an affordable place to live.Less than a quarter of purpose-built rentals in Metro Vancouver would be considered affordable for a household earning less than $48,000 a year. And only one in 1,000 purpose-built rental units were offered to the poorest 20 per cent of households, found the CMHC report.

Even if a lower-income household found a place they could afford, most lower-priced units were too small for families.

“Beyond the overall rental market tightening in 2021, these results reinforce that lower-income households, particularly families, face significant imbalances and pressures when accessing rental housing they can afford,” said the report. 

People moving into a new unit pay more on average as landlords raise rent. According to the report, the average asking price for a vacant unit was 10 per cent higher than the average paid by already-occupied units in Vancouver. 

Newly completed units had the highest rents, averaging $2,522 for two-bedroom units, roughly $500 more than the asking rent of older units and $700 more than the average occupied rent of existing units.  

Across the Metro Vancouver region, the City of Vancouver accounted for the most new purpose-built rentals in 2021, accounting for 41 per cent of the nearly 8,000 built last year. Some cities, like West Vancouver and Richmond, produced zero new purpose-built rentals in 2021. 

Immigration rebound

The COVID-19 pandemic hit young renters hard in 2021, but the CMHC report notes employment in the 15- to 24-year-old demographic had stabilized in Vancouver by the summer of 2021. 

Renewed employment in the region led to new rental households, especially in central urban areas with high rents that had been vacated in 2020, notes the report.

Young people looking for a rental at the University of British Columbia faced a tougher search last year. A vacancy rate of 13 per cent at the University Endowment Lands in 2020 evaporated in 2021 to zero per cent.

“This sudden and complete disappearance of vacancy occurred despite increasing supply in the area over the past year,” noted the report. 

International migration slowed at the start of the pandemic, dropping newcomer rental demand to historic lows. But by the first half of 2021, the easing of pandemic restrictions led international migration to accelerate once again — particularly in B.C. and Quebec — though it remained 36 per cent lower than in 2019, according to data pulled from Immigration Refugee and Citizenship Canada. 

“This implies that net international migration is likely to continue to fuel growth in rental demand and place further downward pressure on vacancy rates, assuming migration continues to recover to pre-COVID levels,” noted the report. 

All census areas surveyed in B.C. saw the number of new permanent residents rise above pre-COVID levels. Meanwhile, international students admitted to Canada between October 2020 and August 2021 increased over 44 per cent compared to earlier in the pandemic, though they still remained nearly 7 per cent below pre-pandemic levels. 

Provincewide problem

Elsewhere in British Columbia, Abbotsford and Mission were the only urban areas in the province that saw the supply of purpose-built rentals outstrip demand in 2021.

 ]In Kelowna, rental vacancy rates sat at 0.6 per cent, and in Victoria, rates dropped to 1 per cent last year, with the average two-bedroom rental climbing to $1,571.

Living in Vancouver Island’s biggest city, a renter would have had to work just over 40 hours per week, a slight decline from the previous year, to afford a two-bedroom purpose-built rental. (Full-time employment is considered 37.5 hours per week). 

That’s in a city where vacancy rates for condominium rentals fell to zero last year.

Households earning less than $42,000 a year could not afford to rent a bachelor unit in Victoria, with the asking price of such units $350 more than what they could afford. 

And those earning $64,000 or less would have to have spent $400 more than what they could reasonably afford for a two-bedroom unit. 

“The majority of rental households, especially low-income households, remain in dire need of affordable and suitable rental housing,” said the CMHC.

© 2022 Western Investor

Metro Vancouvers rental vacancy rate has been chopped in half

Stefan Labb
Western Investor

How will a return to the office impact the mortgage market?

Fergal McAlinden
other

Lenders could increasingly seek clarification on whether work-from-home arrangements are indeed permanent

As Canada edges towards a tentative reopening and easing of COVID-19 restrictions across the country, one of the most intriguing trends to follow will be the future of the work-from-home model.

Amid the many changes wrought by the pandemic era, the advent of the home office revolution has surely been one of the most transformational, with downtown workspaces emptying as COVID case numbers across the country soared and stay-at-home orders took effect.

That had a corresponding impact on Canada’s housing and mortgage markets as tens of thousands of city-dwellers set their sights on a move elsewhere following the realization that they could perform their job as effectively in the suburbs as in the city.

The effect on some of the country’s largest cities was striking. Statistics Canada reported that over 64,000 people left Toronto for other parts of Ontario between June 2020 and June 2021 – a 14% spike compared with the 12 months prior.

Montreal, meanwhile, saw a stunning 60% increase in residents moving to other parts of Quebec, with almost 40,000 people relocating to other areas in the province.

It’s currently unclear whether remote working will remain as prevalent when it’s safe for offices to reopen, even if most provinces ease many COVID-19 restrictions in the near future, as planned.

Read next: Is the urban exodus about to slow down?

Last October, Statistics Canada said that around 40% of jobs in Canada could be done from home – with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also reporting an overwhelming preference for home-working arrangements among surveyed companies.

That organization’s survey, which polled thousands of firms across 25 countries, revealed that 90% of workers would prefer to do more of their work from home in the future. Managers expected about 60% of their workforce to do more of their work from home, and generally said two to three days of home office was the best arrangement.

The question is one that’s already having an impact on the mortgage market, with one Ottawa-based broker noting that clients should be able to clarify whether their work-from-home arrangements are indefinite or if they’ll eventually be called back to their downtown offices.

Chris Allard (pictured top), of Smart Debt Mortgages, told Canadian Mortgage Professional that the question had become an important one for lenders with the future of the home working model so up in the air.

“When we talk to our borrowers and they say they work from home, we really ensure that they distinguish whether it’s short-term or indefinitely working from home,” he said, “because lenders will ask that question as well.

“It’s not logical for you to be moving to Ottawa [from, for example, Toronto] if your employer is saying that they may be calling you into the office next week or month. So, lenders are being wise and asking those questions up front, and we have to make sure that it does make sense.”

That usually means that the employer must confirm that remote working arrangements are possible for the would-be homebuyer, Allard said. Otherwise, the client’s existing job security could be called into question.

“If they’re not willing to confirm that, in most cases we’re [telling] clients that [they] probably need to be getting a job that does accept remote work or an Ottawa-based job,” to put the lender at ease, he said.

Read next: Toronto housing market – long-term impact of unaffordability crisis

While Allard emphasized that clients leaving the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) or the city itself to move to Ottawa didn’t constitute a huge chunk of the company’s business, he said that there had been an uptick since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

The average price of a residence in Ottawa climbed 18% year over year in December 2021, hitting $710,000 – but that still represents a fraction of the skyrocketing cost of a home in the GTA.

There, the aggregate price of a home surpassed the $1.1 million mark, having risen 17.3% in 2021 – and with a further 11% spike in the cards for this year.

“Especially with a lot of people having the ability to work from home, and their company transitioning to a work-from-home model, we definitely are seeing a trend of the GTA person moving to Ottawa,” Allard said, “whether that’s moving back to Ottawa or moving [here] for the first time.

“The young families who have, in most cases, high incomes are realizing that they can perhaps have a better lifestyle in the Ottawa region, given that they can work from home.”

The post-pandemic future of that trend across the country remains to be seen.  

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Tenant awarded $22K after being evicted by B.C. landlord who didn’t move in

Andrew Weichel
other

 A B.C. woman who was unfairly evicted after a new landlord purchased the property she’d been renting for years has been awarded 12 months’ rent for her trouble.

The former tenant disputed her eviction through the Residential Tenancy Branch and walked away with $22,140 in compensation, according to a recent decision that was published online.

None of the parties are named in the document.

The Residential Tenancy Branch heard the tenant began renting the home back in December 2017, and lived there until being served a “Two-Month Notice to End Tenancy for Landlord’s Use of the Property” three years later.

She agreed to move out by Feb. 28, 2021 to make way for the new owner – only for the landlord to begin renting to another tenant one month later.

The landlord testified that she bought the property after separating from her husband, and originally intended to live there with their child, even going so far as to begin moving her things into the home days after the former tenant had left.

But by March 6, she had “decided against occupying the rental unit, and remained in her husband’s home in an attempt to reconcile the relationship,” according to the Residential Tenancy Branch’s decision.

The landlord argued that she faced an extenuating circumstance after realizing the move would force their child to leave their family home and transfer schools.

“The purchaser stated that ultimately, she did what was best for the benefit of her family and had no other option but to re-rent the unit,” the document reads.

Landlords are allowed to evict tenants so that they – or a family member – can move into their property, but they are generally expected to stay there for at least six months.

And the extenuating circumstances that would excuse them from having to pay their former tenant compensation for failing to do so are limited; the Residential Tenancy Branch offered an example in which a parent dies shortly after moving in.

A landlord changing their mind does not meet that bar, according to the decision.

“The purchaser, through reasonable planning, could have anticipated the potential impacts of moving prior to purchasing the unit,” it reads.

The former tenant was also awarded an additional $100 to cover the cost of filing the dispute.

© 2022  All rights reserved

In an overheated real estate market, this Calgary development is a good investment

Western Investor Staff
Western Investor

 Mission District land assembly already has excellent holding income

A new, unique development opportunity is available in Calgary’s trendy Mission district.Photo via Land Professionals.

Mission District land assembly already has excellent holding income

Despite the interest rate hikes anticipated in 2022, the real estate market in Canada remains overheated, especially in Vancouver and Toronto.

Fuelled by flexible work policies and a COVID-19 driven desire for increased space, along with limited offerings for sale, reverberations are being felt in real estate markets across the country as housing prices continue to rise to unprecedented numbers. 

A recent RE/MAX report predicts house prices will rise by 9.2% in Canada in 2022 as a lack of housing inventory in the market will continue to favour sellers. 

The average home price in Toronto set a record high in January 2022, nearing $1.3-million.

New listings and home sales continue to slow in Vancouver while prices increase. The average Vancouver home price for 2022 was over $1.2-million, representing an 18.5% increase from the previous year.

Fortunately, pockets of affordability are still available in Canada, including in Calgary, where the composite home price is $441,500, and downtown condominiums sell for less than $350,000.

Prime development land in Calgary is also a fraction of the price of that in either Vancouver or Toronto. 

 

Photo via Land Professionals.

Calgary was named as the most affordable city in the world for housing, according to the U.K.-based Online Mortgage Service, with high incomes and low real estate prices, leaving residents further ahead than the rest of the country.

While Calgary’s home prices are up 11% from the previous year, they remain $234,000 less than the Canadian average.

Calgary may be affordable for now, but it’s poised for an upturn in demand and prices based partly on the recent surge of oil prices.

The Conference Board of Canada projects Alberta will lead the country in economic growth this year.

All of these factors set up Calgary as a shrewd location to purchase investment property.

One particularly appealing development opportunity is a new and unique land assembly in Calgary’s trendy Mission district.

The 1.35-acres site is listed at $7.8-million and features City of Calgary DC6D2012 zoning that allows for various potential development configurations as residential or commercial. There are no density requirements and allows building heights of 67.26 feet (20.5 metres).

In addition, the land has excellent holding income with nine contiguous detached houses that generate a consistent rental cash flow. 

The seller suggests the location lends itself to use as a multi-family development with ground-level retail. Offers of not less than two adjacent parcels at a time at $2-million will be considered.

The site is in the affluent heart of Alberta’s biggest city.

 

Photo via Land Professionals.

The Mission district, with an average household income of $162,003 and 72,000 residents, is packed with brewpubs, restaurants, grocery outlets, shops and services. The Calgary Stampede grounds, the Saddledome, home of the Calgary Flames, and the BMO convention centre can be found around the corner from the site.

The land is also close to Calgary’s LRT system, which is expanding under the $1.53 billion Green Line expansion, the largest infrastructure project ever undertaken in Calgary.

This is a rare offering in its location, and the seller is expecting multiple offers from developers.

Listing highlights:

• Land size: 1.35 acres
• Location: Mission Road, Mission District
• City: Calgary, Alberta
• Price: $7.8 million

 

© 2022 Western Investor

Vancouver continues to be most expensive city in Canada to rent, as vacancy rates drop: reports

Tiffany Crawford
The Vancouver Sun

A Rentals.ca report says last month the average rent for a one-bedroom home in Vancouver was $2,163 while a two-bedroom place cost $3,003.

 Rental costs continue to soar in Vancouver, according to a couple of reports this week. Photo by Getty Images /PNG

Lower-income families are struggling to find a place to live, as Vancouver continues to be the most expensive city in Canada to rent a home, according to a pair of rental reports.

The vacancy rate for purpose-built rental apartments in Metro Vancouver dropped to 1.2 per cent last year from 2.6 per cent in 2020 because of higher demand following economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation report Friday. Vacancy rates for recently completed new units fell to 2.3 per cent last year from 9.1 per cent in 2020.

The tightening conditions intensified existing imbalances in the Vancouver rental market, CMHC said, adding the data show that lower-income households are facing “significant challenges” finding units that they can afford.

The report says less than a quarter of market purpose-built rental units are affordable to households earning less than $48,000 a year, and only one in 1,000 units are affordable to those with the lowest one-fifth of incomes.

Most of the lowest-priced units are small and unsuitable for families, said CMHC.

In another report, on Thursday, Vancouver topped the list of 35 cities for average monthly rent in January for a one-bedroom home at $2,163 and for a two-bedroom at $3,003.

That’s according to Rentals.ca’s February report, which said Vancouver has the most expensive rents in the country for all property types at $2,550 a month, an increase of 16.2 per cent in the previous 12 months. Toronto was the next most expensive city at $2,317 a month, up 14.5 per cent. 

 

Source: Rentals.ca

In Vancouver, average rent for single-family homes was up to $2,987 a month in January from $2,758 the same month last year, a jump of 8.3 per cent.

Condo apartments average rents rose 7.1 per cent to $2,756 a month in January from $2,573 last year, while condo rents were up 8.4 per cent to $2,456 from $2,265.

Average monthly rent in the whole province for all property types was also the highest in Canada at $2,181, up 9.6 per cent.

 

© 2022 Vancouver Sun

Lumber prices – will they continue rising?

Fergal McAlinden
other

After cooling in January, the cost of the commodity is moving up again

 It’s been a “wild ride” for lumber prices over the past year – and further twists and turns could be down the road in 2022, according to a prominent wood market expert.

Russ Taylor (pictured top), a consultant based in Vancouver, told Canadian Mortgage Professional that while lumber prices – which oscillated wildly in 2021 – were unlikely to skyrocket as significantly this year, sustained high costs would represent a significant blow for builders.

“My common sense tells me it won’t go as high, but knowing how the markets work it very easily could – which would not be good news for homebuilders and resellers of lumber, and even OSB [Oriented Strand Board, a type of plywood],” he said.

Those OSB prices are currently sitting at nearly $1,100 USD per thousand square feet on the market, Taylor said, in stark contrast to its position around the same time last year of about $800. Similarly, a typical framing package of lumber and OSB stood at a cost of around $17,500 USD when prices dropped last August; they’re currently perched at around $50,000, not far from their May 2021 peak of $70,000.

“We used to always say the price of lumber is irrelevant,” Taylor said, “but now, lumber prices are basically triple where they should be, and housing packages are about triple where they should be.”

Read next: Canada lumber prices – massive update

The see-saw trajectory of lumber futures continued in recent weeks, hitting $1,204.90 per 1,000 board feet on February 09 – its highest level for three weeks. That marked the sixth consecutive session that lumber futures had risen by $45, the exchange maximum, and a significant rebound from a January slump.

Construction price pressures have been particularly felt north of the border, with global construction and property consultancy firm Rider Levett Bucknall noting in January that several Canadian markets had some of the highest annual rates of growth in hard construction costs across North America.

Despite that barnstorming start to February, Taylor said that there were some signs that another slowdown was on the way, with supply chain snarls likely to impact housing starts in the near future.

“There are a few more cooling indications. Housing starts are probably going to be a little bit slower just because there’s a lack of material, a lack of builders and supply chain issues – so apparently modelling won’t be as robust as it was in the first quarter of last year,” he said.

“[In 2021] once the retail buyers started to realize lumber prices were crazy high in the second quarter, they stopped buying. I think that will happen this year, because people realize the same thing’s happening.”

Those supply chain issues remain profound, Taylor said, both as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and difficult weather conditions along several key lumber routes.

Speaking with Bloomberg in recent weeks, Resolute Forest Products chief executive officer Remi Lalonde lamented a dearth of trucks and rail cars that he said was leading to long delays in sending lumber to buyers and spiking costs.

Read next: Canadian construction cost growth soars – report

“There are so few trucks available in the Lac. St Jean area right now that if somebody is buying from us we’ll say ‘I have to send it to you by rail because I have no trucks,’” he commented.

Still, Taylor said that big lumber construction projects were performing reasonably well, even if a slowdown was likely in smaller projects because of price constraints in that area.

“The big projects are doing well. Small projects are probably going to stall a little bit as the people see stickier price shock and move to spend their money somewhere else,” he said. “Otherwise in building materials, dealers seem to be slightly less robust than last year at this time – but inventories are about the same as last year.”

Those elevated prices for home framing packages were something to watch, Taylor said, compounding inflation pressures that are already hiking costs for other purchases essential to building and furnishing a new home.

“We’re going to be hitting higher than $60,000 [on home framing packages],” he said. “I’m not sure if we’ll go past $70,000, but obviously that’s a big bite with inflation and so forth affecting all other products in a home.

“Normally we would say if lumber goes up 5% it’s no big deal, but it’s up 200-300% – and everything else is expensive, whether it’s kitchen cabinets, or tiles, or doors.”

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January home sales jump 6.7% despite a record low supply

Diana Olick
other

Sales of previously owned homes in January rose 6.7% from December to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 6.5 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors. That exceeded Wall Street expectations significantly. Sales were 2.3% lower compared with January 2021.

The supply of homes for sale fell to a record low, down 16.5% from a year ago. There were just 860,000 homes for sale at the end of January. At the current sales pace it would take just 1.6 months to exhaust that inventory. A 4 to 6-month supply is considered a balanced market. That is also a record low.

“Seller traffic is very very low, implying that inventory is struggling to make the turn. Realtors are indicating multiple bidding wars are still happening,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors.

Tight supply and strong demand pushed the median price of a home sold in January to $350,300, an increase of 15.4% from January 2021.

That price is being somewhat skewed by the fact that the bulk of sales activity is on the higher end of the market. Supply is leanest on the low end. Homes priced between $100,000 and $250,000 were down 23% from a year ago, while sales of homes priced between $750,000 and $1 million rose 33%. Sales of homes priced above $1 million were up 39%.

Homes are also selling fast, with an average 19 days to go under contract. One year ago, when the market was also strong, days-on-market was 21.

These sales are based on contracts signed in November and December, before mortgage rates began to rise sharply. The average rate on the 30-year fixed loan was around 3.2% during that time. Now it is just over 4%, according to Mortgage News Daily.

The share of sales made all in cash rose to 27% from 19% a year ago. Part of that may be due to a rise in the investor share to 22% from 15% a year ago.

“Investors are really popping out, and this may be why we’re seeing a pop in home sales,” said Yun.

“The major question is whether rising rates will quench housing demand that stems, in large part, from a demographic tidal wave of young households at key homebuying ages,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist for Realtor.com. “Our expectation is that we’ll continue to see home sales at a relatively high level throughout 2022, as post-pandemic shifts like rising workplace flexibility enable would-be buyers to expand their geographic search horizons and find an affordable place to call home.”

Sales of newly-built homes, which are counted by contracts signed during the month not closings, jumped nearly 12% in December from November. Buyers are turning more to new construction because of the very low supply of existing homes for sale. Unfortunately builders are not keeping up with demand, as supply chain and labor issues slow production.

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