Vancouver real estate is finally returning to reality. Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) numbers show prices are still up from last year, but have stalled month-over-month. The stalled prices were accompanied by much lower sales, and multi-year highs for inventory.
Greater Vancouver Home Prices Are Basically Flat From Last Month
The price of a typical home in Greater Vancouver stalled in June, but is still up. The composite benchmark reached $1,093,600, flat from the month before. Prices are now up 9.5% compared to the same month last year. Despite the monthly not doing much, the annual gain is still very, very large for residential real estate.
Greater Vancouver Composite Benchmark Price
The price of a typical home across Greater Vancouver, in Canadian dollars.
Source: REBGV, Better Dwelling.
Speaking of the rate of growth, it’s decelerating already. The annual growth rate from REBGV is 9.5%, the fourth month in a row we’ve seen it decline. Last year it bounced higher just a few points below here, so this is the metric to watch in our opinion.
Greater Vancouver Composite Benchmark Price Change
The annual percent change of a typical home across Greater Vancouver.
Source: REBGV, Better Dwelling.
Greater Vancouver Real Estate Sales Are Down Over 37%
Greater Vancouver real estate sales made a huge decline. REBGV reported 2,425 sales, a 14.4% decline from the month before. The decline works out to a whopping 37.7% drop compared to last year. Phil Moore, president of REBGV noted “Rising interest rates, high prices and more restrictive mortgage requirements are among the factors dampening home buyer activity today.” June is normally one of the bigger months for sales, and this ended up being one of the worst in over three years.
Greater Vancouver Composite Sales Vs. Listings
The number of homes sold vs total inventory in Greater Vancouver.
Source: REBGV, Better Dwelling.
Inventory of Greater Vancouver Real Estate Reaches A 3-Year High
New listings in Greater Vancouver showed substantial declines. REBGV reported 5,279 new listings in June, a 17.2% decline from the month before. That works out to a 7.7% decrease compared to last year. Despite the lower number of new listings, the faster decline in sales led inventory to swell.
Active listings, the total number of listings for sale in REBGV swelled to a new high. REBGV saw 11,947 active listings in June, a 5.8% increase from the month before. This represents an increase of 40.3% compared to the year before, which is a 3-year high.
REBGV is attributing the falling sales and higher inventory levels to rising interest rates, and high prices. Since rising interest rates are a long-term issue not likely to resolve without an economic downturn, that price deceleration is likely to go lower.
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Repeat after me people, when monetary expansion occurs – prices rise. When it starts to contract, they fall. There’s 60 years of data on this, and not one person in Vancouver has looked it up. m
House inventory is far beyond a 3 year high, more like 10-15 year high or more.
And since when does Better Dwelling use the frankenstat “Benchmark Price”? The same stat they have debunked multiple times.
Hmmmm….
Real prices are down, and if we could see a true price comparison, we would see prices are down double digit percentages.
Very little discussion here, however Vancouver is much closer to the correction than Toronto.
Some data is so bad that it’s worst ever recorded.
Vancouver is a funny place. Very little people believe that prices can ever decrease. If you try to have a discussion about the possibility of a correction people think you are from Mars.
Vancouver is funny, I see a lot of Vancouverites commenting on Toronto articles, but not Vancouver stuff.
Could be because Vancouver RE is such a mess people in the lower mainland are just suffering from a kind of “Stockholm syndrome”
I was wondering, as pre-sale units are now starting to complete, do these units of sale count in the total amount of sales #? If they are, sales are much lower then the numbers show because these units were bought 2-3 years ago.
REBGV is only resale. Pre-sales don’t count as sales, they’re financing and registry.
Same thing I said about the sales volume curve for Toronto (although late to the forum). It is at the bottom of the comment list.
Since the fall of last year, it has been flat (except for the Dec-Jan doldrums, which seem to be not as bad as Toronto’s).
Think ‘area under the curve’ and split the curve into two parts – the top peaks and the bottom rectangle base. The bottom rectangle base represent ongoing ‘maintenance’ volumes, that do not vary seasonally. Non-discretionary sales, that are made irregardless of the time of year or volume of listings. New owners to Vancouver, for instance. Forced downsizing. Retirements. The ‘people need a home irregardless’ volume. The variable peaks on the top of the curve are the discretionary, or optional sales. Those that are upgrading or upsizing or non-forced downsizing. People that do not need to move, and are therefore picking ‘the right time’. The ‘wait till the kids are out of school’ or the ‘wait for the weather to get better’ crowd. These sales are drying up. Flat since last fall. An entire segment has left the market. If people do not need to buy, they aren’t.
That makes sense. With increases slowing next will be the speculators.
I track Vancouver west and east detached homes for my personal interest. I look at both benchmark and median selling price.
Vancouver west median price has dropped 22% since its peak in July of 2017. Vancouver east median price has dropped 9.1% since its peak in April 2018, December 2017, and May 2017.
Median price differential between Vancouver west and east has closed 34% since its largest difference in July of 2017. People don’t focus on this enough. The property ladder in Vancouver is broken. As a Vancouver east home owner, I can’t afford to climb the property ladder and purchase a Vancouver west home. I can only sell and move to the suburbs. So until this price gap becomes more reasonable and the property ladder is re-established, prices will continue to decline.
All these claims about price flattening are looking at to broad of an area. Detached homes in Vancouver west are significantly down already, they have been free falling for about a year.
Do you give either stat more weight? Benchmark seems to be the most common talked amount measure. I understand it has season bias to it but how far does benchmark prices lag what is currently going on in the market?