Real estate has been slumping in the Lower Mainland, with sales volumes off by a third from long-term averages and prices down about five per cent from their peak.

Central 1 Credit Union is predicting a slow, weak recovery for real estate in British Columbia, saying it expects a flat market for both unit sales and prices for the next few years.

In its annual forecast released last week, the credit union predicts home sales in the province will gather a bit of strength this fall and hold steady for the rest of the year.

“The year-long correction in home sales is likely to bottom out in the first quarter of 2013, and we’ll see a slow recovery through the rest of the year. But the gains will be modest,” said Bryan Yu, an economist with the credit union.

Yu said there is always a market for homes that are priced well or have a special selling point.

“There’s always going to be some properties that sell quickly, if they’re priced well, or under-priced, perhaps,” Yu said. “But we’re not seeing that reflection in the over-all market that it’s anywhere near a strong market. Listings are high, overall sales levels are low and the reality is the price trends have been negative over the past couple of quarters.”

Yu said it is normal for the real estate market to become busier in the spring.

135 single-family homes have sold on the west side of Vancouver this March, which should result in 160 sales once the month is done; in March 2012, there were 152 sales.

Last year hit a 12-year low in sales, with only 64,400 sold (compared with 76,817 in 2011), and Yu anticipates there will be slightly fewer homes sold this year.

Yu said the resale housing market is hampered by sluggish employment and population growth as well as tighter mortgage requirements that have pushed some first-time buyers out of the market.

Following 2012’s four-per-cent decline, the credit union expects the province’s median annual price to slip five per cent in 2013 to about $363,000, a level last seen in 2009.

In Greater Vancouver, annual resale activity is forecast to decline about four per cent this year to 31,500 homes. The median price will dip six per cent to $474,000 but is expected to rise by the end of 2013, according to the forecast.

The report also says house sales in the Okanagan, Kootenay and Vancouver Island are expected to rise but for now remain near recessionary levels because of weak demand and excess inventory.

The forecast calls for an uptick of 13 per cent in unit sales in 2014 and a further eight per cent in 2015 as the economy improves and consumer confidence grows. Yu expects prices to remain flat through 2015.

Source: Tracy Sherlock/Tiffany Crawford Vancouver Sun

Nearly a quarter of condos in Vancouver are empty or occupied by non-residents in some dense areas of downtown, a signal that investors play a significant role in the city’s housing market.

And the city overall has a much higher rate of empty apartments and houses than other Canadian cities, with a rate closer to places like New York and San Francisco at the height of their mortgage crisis in 2010.

Downtown, the rate is so high that it’s as though there were 35 towers at 20 storeys apiece – empty.

That’s the latest discovery that adjunct UBC planning professor Andrew Yan made when he analyzed 2011 census numbers to try to add more information to the contentious debate over whether Vancouver is turning into a high-end resort or offshore investors’ holding tank.

He revealed those numbers Wednesday night, as a capacity crowd turned out to listen to speakers on a panel at SFU Woodward’s talk about “foreign investment in Vancouver real estate.”

In all, the city of Vancouver appears to have about 7,500 more vacant housing units than what would be expected in most other Canadian cities. For Metro Vancouver, there are around 15,000 to 20,000 more.

That sign of high vacancies and non-resident-owned units, which contradict some other studies and assurances that Vancouver is not being flooded with investors, should give the city pause, analysts say.

“What kind of community are you living in if there are that many empty? For a city to have that kind of vacancy, it’s like cancer,” said Richard Wozny, a real estate consultant, during an interview Wednesday. “It distorts density and it’s delaying the impact. It raises the question ‘Are we over-building?’”

Mr. Yan, who specified that it’s not possible to know exactly why so many apartments were empty, said data indicates Vancouver is creating neighbourhoods that appear to be very dense, but actually don’t have an active full-time population.

That gives a skewed picture of, for example, the amount of commercial activity they can support.

In Coal Harbour, where up to one in four condos is empty in the tower-dominated waterfront neighbourhood between Stanley Park and the downtown convention centre, the scattered shops in the area often struggle to stay in business. By contrast, the West End, which has a low rate of empty residential units, is bounded by three streets – Davie, Denman, and Robson – that are packed with busy small shops and restaurants.

Mr. Yan said that the high numbers of empty apartments don’t prove there’s a problem with foreign investors, but they do indicate that Vancouver has a large proportion of general investor buyers, be they offshore or Canadian.

Housing analyst Tsur Somerville, director of UBC’s Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, said the data he has seen also indicates that Vancouver built more housing in the 2006-2011 period than the number of new households that were added to the city’s ranks.

That means investors. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as those units are occupied, said Mr. Somerville, also on the panel.

“The problem is vacant units since that’s demand for real estate without housing people.”

Mr. Yan’s analysis entailed isolating the census data on dwellings that showed up as either “unoccupied” or occupied “by a foreign resident and/or by temporarily present persons” on Census Day 2011, which was May 10.

“These units could be non-resident occupied because their occupants were just away for the Census Day, between rental tenants, or moving in a just-opened building, but there is also a chance that they are someone’s pied-à-terre, vacation home or empty investment holding,” observed Mr. Yan.

In the city of Vancouver, the rate of those kinds of dwellings stood at 7.7 per cent overall, with some parts of the downtown as high as 23 per cent. In the city of Toronto, the rate was 5.4 per cent; in Calgary, 5 per cent.

If Vancouver’s “non-resident” category had the same rate as Calgary’s, it would have had only about 16,500 empty units on Census Day – the level to be expected in a regular city, where some part of the housing stock is always going to be empty for one reason or another. Instead, more than 22,000 units showed up in that category. An analysis for the whole Lower Mainland shows that it has between 15,000 and 20,000 more empty units, proportionally, than the Calgary or Toronto metropolitan regions.

Source: Frances Bula, Globe and Mail

Homebuyers in the Lower Mainland remained on the sidelines in January, with markedly lower sales in both Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver saw 1,351 sales cleared through the Multiple Listing Service in January, down 14 per cent from the same month a year ago. And January’s sales were down 18 per cent from the previous month.

In the Fraser Valley, the sales decline was even steeper – 23-per-cent lower, to 617.

“January’s numbers are not a surprise,” according to Cameron Muir, chief economist for the B.C. Real Estate Association.

Muir said stricter mortgage rules introduced for first-time buyers last summer bit into sales earlier, but now the bigger factor in declining sales is consumer sentiment that home prices will continue to decline.

Prices in both regions have edged lower from peak levels seen last spring. In Greater Vancouver, the benchmark price for a typical home across the region declined six per cent to $588,100, from $625,100 last May. That price is now 2.8-per-cent lower than the same month a year ago.

In the Fraser Valley, the benchmark price of $420,900 across all property types for typical homes sold was down 2.5 per cent over the last six months.

In his most recent forecast, released last week, Muir estimated lower prices will make housing more affordable for more buyers, and help turn around the decline in sales by the next quarter.

He added that the fundamentals of employment growth, population growth and stronger economic activity that B.C. is experiencing should support a higher level of housing sales than the Lower Mainland saw in January.

“Some buyers may be sitting on the sideline waiting for a deflationary spiral to develop,” Muir said.

“When that doesn’t develop, when they realize they’re not going to see significant declines in pricing, they’ll get on with their lives and move on with purchasing decisions.”

The January numbers do hint at a slowing in the trend of declining sales, according to Tsur Somerville, director of the centre for urban economics and real estate in the Sauder School of Business at the University of B.C.

He noted that in December, Metro Vancouver’s decline in sales was deeper at 31 per cent, so January’s numbers “suggest that there is a possibility the decline in sales should well flatten out.”

And there are some signs home sellers are also beginning to head to the sidelines.

In the Greater Vancouver board, while its inventory of 13,246 homes is 5.6-per-cent bigger than the same month a year ago, new listings slowed 11 per cent to 5,128 in January compared with the same month a year ago. In the Fraser Valley, new listings in January dropped four per cent to 2,643 compared with the same month a year ago, and the overall inventory of 8,031 homes is down 3.5 per cent from last January.

“When a home seller isn’t receiving the kind of offers they want, there comes a point when they decide to either lower the price or remove the home from the market,” Eugen Klein, president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said in a statement. “Right now, it seems many home sellers are opting for the latter.”

Source: Derrick Penner, Vancouver Sun

Home sales are forecast to increase this year and next, with average prices dropping slightly in 2013 and crawling higher in 2014, the British Columbia Real Estate Association said Wednesday.

The association’s latest forecast calls for a 5.6-per-cent increase in the number of sales in 2013 and a further 6.1-per-cent increase in 2014, after the number of sales fell 11.8 per cent in 2012. In Metro Vancouver, the number of sales in Vancouver fell nearly 23 per cent in 2012, but the BCREA expects they will pick up over the next two years.

“I think 2013 is going to be a transition year into 2014 and 2015 when we are finally going to see the global economy start to post more regular performance,” said Cameron Muir, BCREA chief economist.

The economic fundamentals in B.C., such as low interest rates and growth in both employment and immigration, predict a much higher level of sales than are now occurring, Muir said.

“Tighter credit conditions introduced last year have had some impact, but a much larger impact is consumer psychology, where we’ve seen many consumers deciding to take a wait-and-see attitude in 2012. I think many of them will enter into the market in 2013.”

The forecast calls for 75,830 units to be sold in 2014 in B.C., while the five-year average is 74,600 and the 10-year average is 86,800 units, BCREA said.

“Sales, particularly in the fourth quarter of 2012 have certainly moderated, and Vancouver sales are likely going to be low again in January,” Muir said. “This forecast represents stronger activity happening in the second half of 2013.”

The average residential price is forecast to drop one per cent in the province to $510,000 in 2013, and edge up 0.6 per cent in 2014 to $513,500, BCREA said. In Vancouver, the forecast calls for average prices to drop 3.3 per cent in 2013 and a further 0.6 per cent in 2014.

“I don’t expect to see prices going anywhere fast, any time soon,” Muir said. “I expect to see prices remain quite flat over the next few years, and they would even likely decline in real terms if you put inflation into the picture.”

Most forecasts are inaccurate because conditions change over time, said Tsur Somerville, director of the centre for urban economics and real estate, Sauder School of Business at the University of B.C. “In general, BCREA is going to tend to be more optimistic than perhaps one of the banks might be.”

Somerville expects Metro Vancouver’s real estate market to remain slow for a while.

“Prices are more likely to decline over the next year than they are to to go up. I would be surprised if the declines are anything other than very moderate,” Somerville said.

Muir said average wages have been growing about two per cent each year, so condominiums and townhouses are becoming relatively more affordable.

“The benchmark price of condos and townhomes has been quite flat for the past three years, and if you discount that for inflation or wage growth, in a very real sense, real prices for apartments and townhouses are down about six per cent over (the) last three years.”

Muir expects an increase in immigration and solid employment will keep the market stable.

“We’re seeing part-time jobs being rolled over into full-time jobs, which points to a more solid underpinning for the economy and the housing market,” Muir said, adding that as the U.S. and the global economies recover, Canada will benefit.

Housing starts in the province will fall 3.5 per cent to 26,500 units in 2013, and go up 1.5 per cent to 26,900 units in 2014, the forecast said. The transition from the harmonized sales tax to the provincial sales tax may add a short-term boost to new homes sales this spring, the forecast said.

Source: Tracy Sherlock, Vancouver Sun

There is no real estate bubble in Vancouver and 2013 is a good time to buy — as long as interest rates remain low, immigration targets are met and Europe’s economy doesn’t melt down, a panel of real estate developers told more than 1,100 real estate professionals, business leaders and B.C. politicians on Thursday.

Colin Bosa, CEO of Bosa Properties, Tony Astles, executive vice-president of Bentall Kennedy, and Eric Carlson, president and CEO of Anthem Properties provided the Urban Development Institute’s annual market forecast while Diana McMeekin, president of Artemis Marketing, moderated.

Bosa said that as long as people continue to move to British Columbia, the real estate market will remain stable. He compared conditions in 2009 to those today and found that demand is similar, although immigration numbers were down in 2012 and two federal immigration programs — the investor program and the skilled worker program — are under review and could be subject to change.

In terms of supply, he said, more units were built in 2012 than 2009, but not many more than the 15-year average.

“The good news for all the salespeople in the room is, you’re going to sell lots of real estate this year, but the bad news is you’re going to have to work at it,” Bosa said, adding that projects near transit service will continue to sell well.

Southeast False Creek and Coquitlam Centre are two areas with a lot of unsold inventory, Bosa said. He said realtors in those areas might have to “sharpen their pencils” and that prices might decline.

However, he said Metro Vancouver condominium developers showed in 2009 that developers can “turn off the tap” quickly when the market slows.

Bosa said he believes people — and their money — from China will continue to flow into B.C. because they want to invest outside China and they want their children to grow up in North America.

“They like it in British Columbia because it’s safe and they’re accepted here,” Bosa said. “There is a good quality of life with universal health care and good schools.”

Two things that could stop the flow of people from China in to British Columbia would be a recession or a change to Canadian immigration policy, Bosa said.

“If you buy good real estate at fair prices, you can’t go wrong,” Bosa said. “It’s not that hard.”

Carlson said B.C. and Canada were protected between 2009 and 2011 while the rest of the world was reeling from the economic crisis. Canada did not really need the extremely low interest rates as much as the rest of the world, and the low rates coupled with immigration, stimulated the housing market.

“We felt a bit smug if we were provincial in our outlook. That ended in 2012. … We started to feel the malaise for the first time,” Carlson said.

But he forecast that 2013 would be a stronger year because of B.C.’s ties to China and the U.S., which are both seeing economic recovery.

“I think this is the year that the fear factor goes away,” Carlson said, adding that he believes immigration will pick up this year and recovery in the housing market in the U.S. will mean many new jobs are created.

“U.S. unemployment will go down to 6.5 per cent this year, while U.S. gross domestic product will be trending towards three per cent by the end of the year,” Carlson said, adding that he thinks 2013 is a good time to buy real estate.

“I don’t think there is a bubble at all,” Carlson said.

Astles predicted the office building market will remain stable in 2013. He warned that a lack of supply means no rent relief until 2016.

He said Burnaby and New Westminster might have some oversupply, but Vancouver’s downtown is healthy. He said multi-family rentals were a low-risk investment, particularly because of limited supply.

He said there are some challenges when it comes to labour, with employees leaving for higher pay in Edmonton and points North, and with many experienced workers retiring.

Source: Tracy Sherlock, Vancouver Sun

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The number of home sales and the average price of a home are falling in B.C., but not all parts of the province are feeling the same pain.

On Monday, the British Columbia Real Estate Association released numbers for December and the year that showed a drop in the number of sales, sales dollar volume and the average residential price. But most of that drop occurred in Metro Vancouver, while some areas of the province saw growth.

“The provincial numbers have been dragged down by Vancouver and the Fraser Valley in 2012 to a large degree and by Victoria and the Island,” BCREA chief economist Cameron Muir said. “That belies the fact that we did see sales up in the North. The North has done quite well in this post-recession period — pricing is quite strong and sales activity hasn’t seen the kind of volatility that we’ve seen in other markets.”

Muir also cited the Okanagan as showing some growth in sales in 2012, after remaining quite flat after the recession ended.

“So there is some glimmer of light in the Okanagan, and the Kootenays, which are benefiting from improved economic conditions in Alberta,” Muir said.

For the province as a whole, the number of sales dropped 11.8 per cent in 2012 from 2011, while the total sales dollar volume fell 19.1 per cent and the average residential price was $514,836, down 8.3 per cent from the year before.

“A notable pullback in consumer demand in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley during 2012 was more than enough to offset increases in home sales in the Okanagan, Kootenays and B.C. Northern regions,” Muir said. “At least half of the eight-per-cent decline in the B.C. average home price was the result of fewer luxury homes selling in Vancouver and fewer overall Vancouver home sales relative to the rest of the province in 2012.”

In Metro Vancouver, the number of sales dropped 22.7 per cent in 2012 from 2011, while the total sales dollar volume fell 27.7 per cent and the average residential price was $730,063, down 6.4 per cent from the year before.

But as Muir mentioned, there were some areas showing growth, including Kelowna (Okanagan Mainline), where the number of sales grew 11.8 per cent in 2012 from 2011, the total sales dollar volume rose 11.2 per cent and the average residential price was $377,979, up 0.5 per cent from the year before.

Another area with positive numbers in all categories is northern B.C., where the number of sales rose 3.9 per cent in 2012 from 2011, while the total sales dollar volume rose 10.8 per cent and the average residential price was $233,544, up 6.6 per cent from the year before.

Kamloops and Kootenay also showed small growth in all three categories.

For the month of December 2012, sales dollar volume for the province was down 28.6 per cent compared to December 2011, while the number of units sold fell 26.4 per cent and the average price was down three per cent to $498,205.

Source: Tracy Sherlock, Vancouver Sun

Vancouver’s house prices could fall a further five per cent before 2013 is over, a panel of real estate experts said Tuesday.

The BMO panel, led by Sal Guatieri, senior economist, BMO Capital Markets, said tougher mortgage rules and the suspension of the federal immigrant investor program could be factors in the slowdown in Vancouver.

“Nowhere is the housing market weaker than in British Columbia, where resales are down 17 per cent year to November and are well below the past decade norm,” Guatieri said. “Vancouver’s resales have plunged 31 per cent in the year to December and benchmark prices are down just over three per cent since the spring.”

He said the mortgage changes, limiting the life of a mortgage to 25 years from 30 and prohibiting mortgage insurance on homes more expensive than $1 million, will hit pricier markets the hardest. With housing prices estimated at 10-times family incomes, Guatieri said, “that puts Vancouver in the upper echelon of over-valued housing markets, not just in Canada, but across the world.”

He said many would-be house buyers are opting to buy condos, rent or move to other cities because of the high prices.

“What has supported Vancouver’s housing market, at least in the past five years, is not income, it’s wealth. A lot of that is foreign wealth, although we can’t quantify that.

Many buyers don’t even need a mortgage because they have the cash and they can buy a house outright,” Guatieri said.

“But that supply of people is diminishing, especially as prices have continued to go up.

Unless people continue to flood into Vancouver — foreign residents with a lot of money — that market looks very ripe for a meaningful correction — not a material one — of at least five per cent or so for the next year.”

Source: Tracy Sherlock, Vancouver Sun

Single-family homes have been the winners over the long-term while apartments have been struggling, an analysis of Metro Vancouver real estate statistics released last week shows.

B.C. Assessment released 2013 assessments on Wednesday, while the region’s real estate boards released December and year-end information on Thursday.

“The resource that is scarce is land,” said Tsur Somerville, director of the centre for urban economics and real estate, Sauder School of Business at the University of B.C. “You can always build more condominiums, but if you want a backyard, there’s a limited space.”

He said that isn’t likely to change soon, despite the large cohort of baby boomers who could choose to downsize in the near future.

“Most people stay in their houses longer than you expect,” Somerville said. “They want space for the grandkids.”

Cameron Muir, B.C. Real Estate Association chief economist, said 80 per cent of the housing starts in Metro Vancouver are now for multi-family homes, so the stock of single-family homes is becoming a smaller and smaller portion of the market, thus earning an increasing premium.

“Since the end of 2009, the apartment and townhouse market has been essentially flat in terms of pricing,” Muir said. “Real elevation has come in the single-detached side.”

Over the past five years, single-family homes were the big winners, particularly in Burnaby, Vancouver and Richmond, where the five-year gains are still more than 20 per cent.

However, this year, for the first time in many years, a number of homeowners in some areas of B.C. will see a drop in their property assessments. In tony areas like Whistler and Vancouver’s west side, assessments fell, while more affordable areas like Surrey or the Tri-Cities, held their own.

On Thursday, the Greater Vancouver and Fraser Valley real estate boards’ reports showed that both buyers and sellers are both holding off, waiting to see which direction prices will head. Both sales numbers and properties for sale are down, the numbers show.

The real estate boards’ reports provide information on the benchmark price of homes in each Lower Mainland community, and price performance in both the short and long term. Benchmark prices are the estimated sale of a typical property within a market. The data is divided into 85 categories, including 30 areas divided into single-family homes, apartments and townhouses. Some communities do not have housing in all three categories.

For example, comparing the benchmark price in December 2012 to December 2011, apartments in Whistler, South Surrey/White Rock and townhouses in North Surrey all saw their benchmark prices drop more than nine per cent. But not all apartments and townhouses were on the wrong side of the real estate equation: the biggest growth in benchmark prices was in townhouses in Whistler and Squamish and apartments in Pitt Meadows and North Surrey. For single-family homes, the benchmark price has not moved up or down by more than 6.5 per cent in any region, the data shows.

For more immediate trends, an analysis of the one-month change in benchmark price shows a drop of about four per cent in the benchmark prices of townhouses in South Surrey/White Rock and North Surrey and houses on the Sunshine Coast between November 2012 and December 2012. At the other end of the spectrum, there was an uptick of 5.8 per cent in the benchmark price of an apartment in North Burnaby between November and December, and one of 3.7 per cent on the benchmark price of an apartment in Pitt Meadows.

Year-over-year, 30 categories showed gains in benchmark price, while 58 categories showed losses. The five-year change, which compares benchmark prices from January 1, 2008, before the housing crash in the U.S., is negative in 43 categories. Those include apartments in 24 of 30 areas, townhouses in 12 of 30 areas and single-family homes in seven of 30 areas. The slide ranges from 39.1 per cent over five years for an apartment in Whistler to 0.5 per cent for an apartment in Tsawwassen.

Apartments in the city of Vancouver, in Burnaby South and in Ladner were the only dwellings to show gains in benchmark prices over the past five years, while townhouses showed gains in most areas over that period.

Source: Tracy Sherlock, Vancouver Sun

This year, for the first time in many years, a number of homeowners in some areas of B.C. will see a drop in their property assessment, B.C. Assessment said Wednesday.

The most significant decreases will be seen in Whistler, Pemberton, on the Sunshine Coast and on Bowen Island, said Jason Grant, B.C. Assessment Authority assessor for the Vancouver Sea to Sky region.

“In stark contrast to last year, where (more than) 25-per-cent increases weren’t unusual, most residential homeowners (in Vancouver Sea to Sky) will open their assessment this year and say, ‘I’m within about five per cent … of where I was last year,’” said Grant McDonald, deputy assessor for B.C. Assessment’s Vancouver Sea to Sky region.

“Looking at the city of Vancouver, if you drew a graph for a 10-year period from 2002 to 2012, it pretty much is a very steep curve in terms of value increases, with a blip in 2008 when values appeared to be falling a bit. Now it has sort of flattened off; the market is taking a bit of a breather.”

Last year, homeowners in some areas of Vancouver, West Vancouver, Richmond and Burnaby saw their assessments rise as much as 30 per cent, while some areas, such as Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton saw decreases of 10 to 15 per cent.

“Some of the markets that saw some pretty good run ups in prices in 2011, saw a kind of floating back to earth in 2012,” said Cameron Muir, B.C. Real Estate Association chief economist. “For example, we’ve seen the single-family, detached-home market on the west side of Vancouver show more softness after a relatively strong 2011.”

Property assessments for a given year reflect market value as of July 1 the previous year. B.C. Assessment does not provide averages, but it did provide some specific “representative examples” of properties and how much their values changed this year.

A 50-foot, single family lot on Vancouver’s west side that was assessed at $1,645,400 in 2012 is assessed at $1,622,900 for 2013, a drop of 1.3 per cent. A single-family home on a 33-foot lot on the west side of Vancouver is assessed at $1,256,200, a drop of 5.8 per cent compared to a 2012 assessment of $1,329,600.

On the city’s east side, a 33-foot single-family lot assessed at $1,031,300 last year is assessed at $1,081,700 this year, an increase of 4.9 per cent.

In Whistler, a single-family dwelling in Alpine Meadows that was assessed at $2,252,000 last year is assessed at $2,145,000 this year, a drop of 4.8 per cent. In Whistler Village, a two-bedroom apartment that was assessed at $491,000 last year is assessed at $429,000 this year, a drop of 12.6 per cent.

On Bowen Island, a non-waterfront single-family home that was assessed at $530,000 last year was assessed at $454,000 this year, a drop of 14.3 per cent. A waterfront home there dropped to $1.3 million from $1.7 million, a drop of 23.5 per cent.

Muir said both of those areas are dependent on recreational buyers, and that the strong Canadian dollar and concerns about the U.S. and global economy are affecting that market.

“When we look at recreation properties, as well as luxury properties, (they) tend to be much more volatile in pricing,” Muir said. “When times are very good, prices tend to climb much more rapidly than your typical home. At the same time when we see some weakness, they’re likely to decline more rapidly as well.”

In other areas of Metro Vancouver, some properties saw increases up to 10 per cent, while some areas saw drops of up to five per cent from last year.

For example, a single-family house in the Thompson area of Richmond that saw a 30-per-cent increase last year to $1,677,000, is this year assessed at $1,642,000, a drop of two per cent.

Two years ago, Richmond saw some properties increase as much as 17 per cent, while many West Vancouver and Vancouver homeowners saw jumps in assessment of 12 or 13 per cent. Whistler prices were down two per cent at that time.

B.C. Assessment does provide percentage changes in the total value of properties in a region, but this amount is not an average change that homeowners will see on their assessments because it includes new construction and other non-market factors such as renovations and rezonings. Nonetheless, it is an indication of the general direction property assessments are moving in a given area.

For 2013, the total property roll for Vancouver increased 2.08 per cent, in Delta it rose 3.55 per cent, in Surrey it rose 5.15 per cent and in West Vancouver it rose 8.8 per cent. The total property roll in Whistler fell 3.81 per cent, on Bowen Island it fell 6.9 per cent and in Pemberton it fell 4.31 per cent.

Across the province, the total number of properties on the 2013 roll is 1,935,426, a 0.92-per-cent increase from 2012. The total value of real estate on the 2013 roll is $1,129,026,081,413, a 2.3-per-cent increase from 2012, B.C. Assessment said.

A drop in a property’s value does not necessarily translate into a drop in property taxes, which would only differ from a city’s budgeted increase if a particular property has gone up or down in value more than the average for other properties in the same community.

Property assessments for 2013 reflect market value as of July 1, 2012. Since that time, sales in Metro Vancouver have slowed and some prices have dropped.

“In markets that have declined in value since the summer of 2012, the 2013 property assessment may be higher than current sales or listing prices,” said Zina Weston, deputy assessor.

“We’ve seen quite a decline in the number of sales; so far for 2012 it’s down about 30 per cent, but the actual values haven’t really come off. In Vancouver, things are still selling for higher than we had on the assessment roll last year,” McDonald said.

People who feel that their property assessment does not reflect the home’s property value as of July 1, 2012, should contact the B.C. Assessment office for their area. Appeals will be accepted until January 31.

“It is a quieter year and I suspect that will be reflected in the number of inquiries we get,” McDonald said. “It will be interesting to watch the next few months to see what happens.”

One assessed value that is contentious is that of the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal; a recent decision by the Property Assessment Appeal Board slashed its value to just $20 from $47.7 million, meaning the District of West Vancouver will lose about $250,000 in property tax revenue. The District of West Vancouver plans to fight the assessment, which could have ramifications for other ferry terminals, in court.

The province increased the threshold for the Home Owners Grant for property taxes by $10,000 to $1.295 million to keep pace with rising property value assessments, Finance Minister Michael de Jong announced Wednesday.

Assessments will be arriving in the mail in the next few days and are available online at http://evaluebc.bcassessment.ca.

Source: Tracy Sherlock, Vancouver Sun