Royal LePage: HOMES: Largest increase seen in condominium market
Eric Beauchesne
Province
CREDIT: The Canadian Press The real estate market is expected to favour the buyer in 2005, claims Royal LePage.
OTTAWA — The average selling price of a detached bungalow in the final quarter of last year was a record high of more than $250,000, a major real estate firm reported Friday.
Royal LePage expressed surprise at the strength of what it said was still a seller’s housing market as 2004 drew to a close but predicted a cooler and more balanced market this year.
“The end of the year traditionally signals a slowdown of housing market activity, however the major markets demonstrated surprising strength in the fourth quarter, as average prices rose, year-over-year,” Royal LePage Real Estate Services reported.
“Most markets remained in the seller’s favour, however buyers experienced more equal conditions toward the end of 2004 which are expected to continue into 2005,” it said.
The steepest increase in prices from a year earlier was for condominiums, which were up 7.3 per cent to an average of $172,185 in December, followed by standard two-storey homes, which were up 6.3 per cent to $302,107, and detached bungalows, up 5.8 per cent to $251,238.
While all were record highs, Royal LePage said the “trend in 2004 was toward a stabilization of average price gains.”
And this momentum is expected to slow and the market will deliver smaller but more sustainable price gains that are typical of a balanced housing market, said Phil Soper, head of Royal LePage Real Estate Services.
That means that the time it takes to sell a home will increase this year as sellers adjust to the smaller increases, he said.
“There will be a little bit of a disconnect between sellers’ expectations and buyers’ expectations,” he said.
Housing prices, which rose by about six per cent on average across the country over the past year should increase at about half that pace this year.
Prices in Vancouver and Ottawa should be somewhat greater than the national average, Montreal and Toronto should match the average, and smaller centres, such as Regina and Halifax, will likely trail those in the big cities.
In the final quarter the steepest price increases were in Vancouver, then Victoria and Winnipeg, all of which posted double-digit gains from a year earlier.
© The Vancouver Province 2005