REAL ESTATE: Slight drop in Vancouver no cause for concern
Gordon Clark
Province
Home sales continued to dip slightly last month in Greater Vancouver but they rebounded in the Fraser Valley, which hit a record for May sales.
In Greater Vancouver, sales of detached, attached and apartment properties reached 4,297 units in May, down 3.1 per cent from the May 2005 sales of 4,434 units, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver says in its monthly report.
The largest drop occurred with apartment properties, which saw sales fall by 10.8 per cent to 1,760 sales in May compared to 1,974 in May 2005. The average Greater Vancouver apartment cost $321,559, up 24.4 per cent from a year ago.
Detached home sales also dropped — although only 0.6 per cent — from 1,776 sales in May 2005 to 1,765 last month. The benchmark price was $635,926, 21.5 per cent higher than a year ago.
Attached properties bucked the downward trend, recording a 12.9-per-cent jump in sales to hit 772 sales in May from 684 sales in the same month a year earlier.
The benchmark price was $396,455, 21.7-per-cent higher than in May 2005.
Board president Rick Valouche said the number of residential properties available for sale last month was 14 per cent higher than in the same month a year ago.
“The increase in listing activity we saw this May is great news for homebuyers in the Greater Vancouver market,” he said.
Despite the two-month drop in sales, realtors aren’t worried, said Dave Watt, the board’s second vice-president.
The drop was largely caused by a decrease in apartment sales, which is partly due to the increasing number of condo pre-sales run by developers that don’t show up in multiple-listing statistics, he said.
“Overly concerned? Not at all,” he said, noting that over-riding economic factors such as low interest rates, an inflow of residents and the growth in jobs is swelling the ranks of homebuyers.
The Fraser Valley Real Estate Board reported Friday that sale in May set a record for that month of 2,245 sales — nine per cent higher than the 2,067 sales in May 2005.
“We knew it was going to be a strong month but we couldn’t have predicted that strong,” said board president David Rishel, who noted the strong demand and lack of new inventory resulted in a decline in active listings.
The average price of a single-family detached home in the Fraser Valley was $463,100 in May, up 19 per cent from $389,288 from May 2005. The average condo increased 16.2 per cent to $291,079 from $250,447.
© The Vancouver Province 2006