Average price for Greater Vancouver homes drops
Joanne Lee-Young
The Province
A benchmark price for homes across Metro Vancouver has fallen below the $1-million mark for the first time in two years.
And the number of sales across the region dropped to the fewest since 2000, outstripping the lows seen in 2008 after the subprime mortgage crisis, and in 2012, after the real estate crash, which ended up being a six-month blip.
“This time, I can’t quite get a sense of whether it’s that we are in a valley or if we are at the precipice at the end of a plateau,” said Vancouver real estate agent Keith Roy, after the release of the latest monthly report by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.
“It’s not as obvious.”
He described it as a “tale of multiple markets” with little rhyme or rhythm. He has several offers on “an old Vancouver Special in Marpole” but also a “three-bedroom condo in New Westminster with one of the lowest prices in the Lower Mainland” where interest has been “quieter than anticipated.”
Another thing that could be different about this slump is that a wider market is involved.
“It’s more painful. Everybody is affected. With the last two (downturns), it was just (the market of people who owned and were trying to sell) houses,” said Roy, explaining that between 2008 to 2015, condo sales were flat before sales took off and prices rose in double-digit percentage gains until 2018.
The Multiple Listing Service home price index’s composite benchmark price, which is loosely defined as being that of a typical home, was $998,700 in June, which is a 9.6-per-cent drop from a year ago and a 0.8-per-cent drop from the previous month. The benchmark price hasn’t been below $1 million since May 2017.
“I’m usually good for a grand prediction. I pride myself on giving good advice,” said Roy. “But I’m struggling to tell some people what their property is worth because there are so few buyers. We just don’t know. There are some properties where if we cut the price in half, I’m not sure we would get more buyers at a showing.”
For several year, researcher Andy Yan has mapped the location of homes that were assessed over $1 million, creating, at first, a tidy line that divided west side and east side properties. But by 2018, his $1-million map showed a fanning across the region, with 73 per cent of single-family homes in Metro Vancouver being assessed at over $1 million.
Of the fall in the benchmark price, Yan echoed Roy’s thoughts, describing the market as “very pockmarked” rather than easy to read or predict. He said that as sales and prices fall below $1 million, there won’t necessarily “be a receding tide, but an uneven marsh.”
© 2019 Postmedia Network Inc.