A low inventory of single-family detached homes for sale in Metro Vancouver has buyers engaging in multiple bidding wars or camping out to get a shot at the few homes when they come on the market.

The demand is so high that many buyers are paying more than the original asking price and, in some cases, aren’t bothering with inspections or subjects on the property before signing on the dotted line, said Cory Raven, managing partner at ReMax Select Realty.

This is because they’re afraid someone else will beat them to the punch if they wait or take their time, he said.

“It’s very typical for someone to enter the market once, twice or three times expecting to buy a house and going into the bidding war and losing.” Raven said.

“It really has changed the dynamic of the good old days when you see a place, put in an offer and wait a couple of weeks … people are going into a 40-year-old house with no inspections.”

Such tactics are not surprising in the most expensive region in Canada for residential real estate in 2014. The average residential sale price for a single-family home in Metro Vancouver this year was about $838,400, up from $781,517 a year earlier, according to the ReMax 2015 housing market outlook.

And the situation isn’t expected to improve much for buyers looking for deals in 2015, with home prices forecast to rise by at least three per cent across Metro Vancouver — similar to what was experienced this year. Healthy gains are also anticipated in Kelowna, which is expected to see a seven-per-cent increase, and Victoria, slated for a four-per-cent rise in house prices.

The market is so hot that sales of single-family houses are still being listed across Metro Vancouver into mid-December, when they would have usually stopped by now before resuming in the new year, said Brian Lamb, of Royal LePage Realty Coquitlam.

“It’s bizarre,” Lamb said. “It can only go up in the first quarter of 2015. I think we’re going to have an incredible first half.”

The ReMax report suggests young families and older homeowners wishing to downsize are expected to drive demand, while interest from Mainland China also continues to influence the Greater Vancouver market.

“The supply side has definitely been affected,” Raven said. “A lot of people who are housing rich don’t know what to do with the equity except to keep it.”

David Lamb, of Sutton Group West Coast Realty, agreed many older people are hanging on to their homes, which is having an impact on inventory. He recently had eight offers on a home in Windsor Park on the North Shore, while a property east of Seymour raked in $40,000 more than the asking price, which was round the mid-$800,000s.

“Earlier this year we had a guy who lost out four times and finally found a house,” David Lamb said. “It’s emotional, it’s tough. When there’s a lot of competition, there’s always somebody who will pay more.”

It’s not just older homes that are facing the crunch. Lamb said foreign investors are willing to pay more for a home in Metro Vancouver, particularly in the Tri-Cities and Burnaby, where they tend to knock down existing homes to build their own.

He cited the Rivers Run development as an example of foreign investment interests: in the first two phases 24 homes sold within hours, while the remaining 14 homes were snagged within an hour by buyers who camped overnight to get them.

ReMax expects there will be upward pressure on detached house prices in Vancouver’s west side due to high demand and low inventory, but said the condo and townhouse markets will likely sustain a more balanced market.

However, even those markets aren’t immune from buyers’ frenzy. ReMax realtor Mary Cleaver said a four-bedroom townhouse listed on Vancouver’s Carolina Street had seven offers and was sold within the week, with no subjects and at $50,000 more than the asking price. “It is unique for that to happen,” she said.

Condos in East Vancouver were in high demand near the end of 2014, according to the report, which suggested well-priced homes often sold within one to two weeks, whereas the average market time for condos was 45 days. “The condo market has been healthy but nowhere near the bidding wars and housing (price) gains,” Raven said.

But both Lamb and Raven said some people are starting to get buyers’ fatigue and bowing out of the bidding wars. Two Sundays ago, Lamb said, 28 people had come through an open house, but several parties decided not to bother in the bidding. “We had people who won’t get tied up in this flurry,” he said.

However, ReMax noted as those potential buyers move to the sidelines and wait for the market to stabilize, the demand in the region will continue to grow.

Source: Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun

After 18 months on the job, Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz has yet to wield the primary tool at his disposal: the key interest rate.

When Poloz took the bank’s reins in June 2013, he inherited an overnight rate set nearly three years earlier by his predecessor Mark Carney. That rate has yet to budge from one per cent, idling for one of the longest stretches in Bank of Canada history.

Bill Robson, the president of the C.D. Howe Institute think-tank, believes it will happen sometime in 2015 thanks to an increasingly positive economic outlook, including an improving U.S. economy and a pickup in Canadian exports.

Once the bank’s overnight rate starts to creep up, Canadian businesses will see their borrowing rates rise as will consumers who take out car loans and mortgages.

Ian Lee, a professor at the Sprott School of Business at Ottawa’s Carleton University, predicts businesses will feel the sting of higher rates right away, but he expects the effect on households to be much more muted.

Many consumers, he added, will avoid a sudden jolt because of fixed-rate loans and mortgages.

On top of that, Lee said the rate would likely inch up a quarter-percentage point at a time, making the coming increases easier to manage than the towering Canadian levels of the early 1980s.

Lee said the rate hikes in the early 80s killed the real-estate market, but didn’t create a housing meltdown and the number of foreclosures barely increased.

On the flip side, higher rates would help pension funds reap a bigger return on their investments, Lee added.

McGill University economics professor Christopher Ragan said, fundamentally, rising rates are a good thing.

“It is signalling a stronger economy,” he said.

The Bank of Canada said last week the country had showed signs of a “broadening recovery” and the output gap appeared to be smaller than it had projected just six weeks earlier. The output gap represents the divide between where the economy stands at a given time and where it would be when performing at its full potential.

However, the bank’s statement offset the positives by pointing to potential threats: weakening oil prices that drive down inflation and the significant risks of high household debt accumulated during years of low borrowing rates.

The basic logic behind low rates is to encourage people to gather debt when the economy is weak, said Ragan, who has worked at the Bank of Canada.

Robson belongs to the camp that expects Canada’s strengthening economy to force Poloz to move the rate in the middle of 2015, while Lee predicts the rapidly shrinking output gap will spur an increase as early as this spring.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development recently predicted the Bank of Canada would start pushing the rate up in late May due to advancing inflation, a key driver of interest rates.

At the other end of the spectrum, economists like David Madani of Capital Economics expect Poloz to stand pat for a while, even after the U.S. Federal Reserve starts hiking its own key rate.

He predicts the forces pushing Canadian inflation upwards to remain fairly subdued in 2015, which he says will keep the central bank in a “holding pattern” for the whole year.

Robson said it would even be OK if Poloz raised rates and then edged them back down, if necessary.

“Everybody knows that the central bank has trouble reading the economy just as everyone else does,” he said.

Source: Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press

The benchmark price for a typical detached home – a gauge that omits the most expensive properties – is approaching $1-million in Greater Vancouver.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver uses the resale home price index (HPI), which strips out the priciest properties, because it asserts that calculation serves as a better barometer of trends than average prices.

On Tuesday, the board reported that the HPI for single-family detached houses reached a record-high $997,800 last month, up 7.9 per cent from November, 2013.

The HPI for detached homes on Vancouver’s west side hit $2,323,300 last month, up 10.9 per cent from November, 2013, while the index for Vancouver’s east side reached $957,300, up 11.9 per cent from a year earlier. Both of those prices also set records.

The average price for detached homes sold in the region has risen 1.2 per cent over the past year to $1,274,904.

Over all, the HPI for detached houses, townhouses and condos rose to $637,300 last month in Greater Vancouver, up 5.7 per cent from a year earlier.

Greater Vancouver had 2,516 housing sales last month, up 8.4 per cent from November, 2013, and 6.9 per cent higher than the 10-year average for that month. “It’s been a more active fall than we typically see,” board president Ray Harris said in a statement.

In the Fraser Valley, which includes the sprawling and less expensive Vancouver suburb of Surrey, there were 1,136 residential sales on the Multiple Listing Service in November, up 15.2 per cent from 986 properties sold in the same month last year.

November’s HPI for Fraser Valley detached homes climbed to $575,400, up 4.6 per cent year-over-year.

Source: Brent Jang, The Globe and Mail

One measure which suggests that housing demand is relatively strong heading into 2015 is the number-of-months’ supply of homes for sale in Canada, which declined from 5.9 to 5.8 in October, its lowest level since April of 2012.

Also, year-over-year house prices in the Teranet/National Bank House Price Index (+5.4% Oct) and the Canadian Real Estate Assn House Price Index (+5.5% Oct) have trended gradually higher since the beginning of 2014. However, the rates of increase in both indexes early in the final quarter of 2014 are nowhere near the levels they reached in 2006 of 14.1%, and 13.0% respectively and early in 2010 (12.7% and 12.5%).

Turning to the supply of dwellings, housing starts in Canada have remained quite stable. Indeed, over the past two years, starts have averaged 190,000 units seasonally adjusted at annual rates (SAAR) which is at or very close to the estimated rate of household formation. Further, despite the steady uptrend in existing home sales and the above noted gradual increase in house prices, housing starts trended lower since mid year.

Another indicator of housing market health is the percentage of mortgages that are more than ninety days in arrears. In line with the very gradual decline in the number of regular Employment Insurance beneficiaries and the unemployment rate since the beginning of the year, the percentage of mortgages more than ninety days in arrears has trended down from 0.32% in January to 0.29% in August, its lowest value since September of 2007.

Further according to the most recent Annual State of the Residential Mortgage Market in Canada published by the Canadian Assn of Accredited Mortgage Professionals, approximately 77% of the 1.35 million homeowners who renewed their mortgates in 2014 saw a 0.8% drop in their mortgage rate. This decline in mortage rates over the past year suggests that the majority of mortgage holders renewing over the next twelve months will also see a reduction in rates.

Looking forward, the fundamental drivers of housing demand in Canada appear more positive now than they have been for several quarters. First, over the past two months, Canada has added 117,000 jobs, the vast majority of which (96,000) are full time. Second, according to a recent study by CIBC, immigration has made a much stronger contribution to growth of Canada’s prime 25-44 age group than was previously estimated. Indeed, over the past five years, growth of this age group, the major driver of employment and household formation, has accelerated from -0.8% y/y in 2009 to +1.1% in 2014.

This rate is well above the average growth of the OECD and 75% faster than in the United States. Third, in addition to giving a boost to consumer spending, lower energy prices should, by increasing discretionary income, make home ownership more affordable. Finally, interest rates are likely to remain low well into the middle of the year and while they may edge higher in the second half of 2015, they are unlikely to chill housing demand significantly. Given these positive fundamentals, we expect housing starts to total in the range of 185,000 to 195,000 in 2015 compared to an estimated 190,000 in 2014.

Source: John Clinkard, Daily Commercial News

Even though real estate prices have been rising faster than inflation and are going through the roof in some parts of Canada, home ownership actually became more affordable in the third quarter, according to a quarterly survey by RBC Economics.

The bank credits rising household incomes, low interest rates and lower utility costs in some markets for making it a bit easier to own a home.

During the July-to-September period, RBC’s housing affordability measure at the national level fell 0.2 percentage points to 47.8 per cent for two-storey homes. It also fell for condos – down 0.3 percentage points to 27.1 per cent.

“A trend that jumped out in the latest data was a further broad improvement in affordability of condos where a strong majority of markets across Canada saw the measure for the segment fall,” said RBC chief economist Craig Wright in a release.

“Condos no doubt continue to be the more affordable ownership option in every market.”

The affordability measure for detached bungalows was the outlier; it rose a tenth of a percentage point to 42.6 per cent.

An affordability reading of 50 means that ownership costs, which include mortgage costs, property taxes and utility costs, would require 50 per cent of a household’s monthly gross income.

The latest data from the Canadian Real Estate Association shows that the national average home resale price rose 7.1 per cent on a year-over-year basis in October.

The MLS home price index, which many observers consider a better indicator of home price trends, rose 5.5 per cent over the same period.

Some markets, notably Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary, have seen real estate prices rise much faster than the national average. The bank notes that it is the robust activity in these three markets that has been largely responsible for eight monthly increases in resales in the last nine months.

Affordability remains a big stretch in Vancouver and Toronto. The cost of a benchmark detached bungalow in Vancouver, for instance, requires 83.6 per cent of a typical household’s pretax income to carry. In Toronto, it takes 56.3 per cent.

RBC says a drop in fixed mortgage rates earlier this year helped to drive the current strength in the housing market. But it doesn’t expect that situation to last.

“A combination of gradually increasing interest rates and higher prices will likely reverse the improvement in housing affordability that took place in the past year and weigh more and more heavily on homebuyer demand in Canada,” said Wright.

“We expect the next stage of the housing cycle to be a transition toward lower resales and slower price increases.”

RBC said it expects the Bank of Canada to raise its key overnight lending rates in the middle of next year, but says longer-term rates will rise “well before that.”

Source: CBC News

The total number of home sales in Greater Vancouver is expected to hit 33,800 units by the end of 2014, the British Columbia Real Estate Association announced November 18 in its housing forecast.

This is 16.6% higher than the number of units sold in 2013 (28,985).

The association anticipates that unit sales will see a modest increase of 0.6% in 2015, bringing total sales to 34,000 in that year.

The average home price in Greater Vancouver is forecast to be $814,000 in 2014 – up 5.2% compared with $767,765 in 2013. The BCREA anticipates a slight increase of 0.1% in 2015 to $815,000.

Across B.C., home sales will reach 83,940 units by the end of this year. This is more than 15% higher than the number of units sold in 2013. It is also almost 5% higher than the number of 2014 sales forecast by the association in July, which, at 80,100 units, would be the first time since 2009 that sales were expected to exceed 80,000 units.

In 2015, strengthening economic conditions will push sales upward, but this will be offset in part by increasing interest rates, forecasts the BCREA.

“Consumer demand has ratcheted up this year and is expected to remain at a more elevated level through 2015,” said Cameron Muir, BCREA Chief Economist.

“While historically low mortgage rates support demand, the housing market is also being underpinned by a more robust economy and associated job growth, strong net migration and consumer confidence.”

The average home sale price across the province will be 568,800 in 2014, forecasts the association. This is 6% higher than the average of $537,414 in 2013. Prices in 2015 are expected to grow a further 0.8% to an average of $574,300.

The average number of units sold provincially over the past 15 years was 80,400. In 2005, sales hit a record 106,300 units.

Source: Emma Crawford Hampel, Business in Vancouver

Rumours of the great Canadian housing bubble are greatly exaggerated, says Greg Klump, chief economist for the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA).

While Canadian housing prices have increased an average 6.9 per cent so far this year (the highest in a decade), the more accurate housing price index (HPI) has increased 5.2 per cent for the first 10 months of 2014, which is the best in three years, according to CREA.

Moreover, if you take Toronto, Vancouver and to a lesser extent Calgary out of the picture, the average price increase would be several percentage points lower, while other market measures, like sales-to-listings ratios and month’s supply of homes for sale, are close to their 10-year averages.

“The problem with housing market bubble stories is that they fail to recognize fundamental housing market dynamics,” Klump told the Association of Regina Realtors in Regina Thursday. “For a big price correction to take place, we need a big and lasting run up in supply … or a big and lasting drop in demand … or some combination of the two.”

Since neither a recession (which would result in massive layoffs) nor a big spike in interest rates (which would drive up debt-servicing costs) is on the horizon, Klump said: “I just don’t see that happening.”

Still even reputable agencies like Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp have expressed concern about Canadian housing prices, which have continued to outstrip U.S. home prices in 2013, even when inflation and exchange rates are taken into account. “This Canadian ‘premium’ could be cause for concern because it may indicate that house prices in Canada are overvalued,” CMHC said in its annual Canadian Housing Observer released Thursday.

Following his presentation, Klump said CMHC’s concern is that “average house price growth is being stretched” by increasing average prices in two of Canada’s most active markets, Vancouver and Toronto.

“What’s going on in Vancouver and Toronto reflects a couple of things,” Klump said. “No. 1, you’ve got some very high-priced homes making up a greater proportion of the sales, pulling up the average price in those markets and for Canada as well.”

For example, Toronto saw a nine per cent year-overyear increase in average home prices in October, versus the 5.5 per cent increase in HPI nationally.

In addition, those price increases are largely in the central Toronto area, where “densification” initiatives (i.e., condo construction) have driven up the price of single-detached homes.

“It’s a function of the market because you don’t have enough supply to catch up with the demand,” Klump said.

“In Vancouver, you’re capped by geography. There’s no place to go. So there’s a lot of expensive homes being sold and an ongoing shortage of affordable homes.”

Source: Bruce Johnstone, The StarPhoenix

That’s the news from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA). The data reflect sales that are stronger than expected, with recent months showing higher performance than experts foresaw. Nevertheless, sales activity is expected to reach a peak in the third quarter as the impact of a deferred spring fades and price increases push down sales by reducing affordability and pricing potential purchasers out of the market.

The increase will see 2014 slightly outperform the 10-year average, while remaining broadly in line with it. In other words, this is a slight improvement on an already healthy business as usual, not a deviation from normality. There have been periods of monthly volatility since the depths of the 2008-9 recession, but annual activity has remained fairly stable. This stability contrasts favourably with the sharp growth seen just prior to the 2008 crash: Canada is undergoing a prolonged period of stable growth, not the run-up to a bubble.

Broken down by region, British Columbia is by far the biggest winner, expected to post an 11.9% year-on-year increase in activity, with Alberta running in second place and expected to show a 7.7% rise. Demand in both provinces is running at multi-year highs, as the desirability of residence in Vancouver or Edmonton combats the downward push of rising prices on demand.

Other regions are not posting such success stories, though. In Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and New Brunswick, activity is expected to remain in line with 2013 levels and sales will increase in the range between 1% and 2% – lower in Ontario and New Brunswick than in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

And some provinces are not sharing in the sales boom at all. In Nova Scotia and in Newfoundland and Labrador, sales are down by 3.9% and 5.2% respectively, providing a rural mirror to the urban boom that pushed up the national statistics.

The national average price has largely followed predictions since the spring, and is currently forecast to rise by 5.9% to $405,000 by the end of 2014, again with rises concentrated in British Columbia and Alberta. Ontario is expected to experience a similar rise, while Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador are expected to see rises of only about 1%. Quebec isn’t expected to manage more than half that, while prices in New Brunswick are forecast to flatline, and in Nova Scotia CREA expects them to fall by as much as 2%.

Longer range forecasts see prices rising more slowly next year, up by 2% in Alberta and Newfoundland and by more modest amounts elsewhere, in line with the trend of both price and sales growth being concentrated on Canada’s prosperous West Coast.

Although the rises are expected to be transitory, sales have yet to show signs of cooling. Activity has strengthened over the summer, rather than relapsing as expected following a spring boom thought to be attributable to Canada’s unusually bad winter. The large urban markets that originally drove the spring rebound continue to dominate, while rural markets have continued their slide.

Source: Les Calvert of www.property-abroad.com

The national average home price rose in October but the impact of Canada’s two largest markets is continuing to influence Canada-wide numbers, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association.

Across the countries prices were up 7.1% from a year ago to an average of $419,699. Once Toronto and Vancouver are removed, the annual gain slips to 5.4% and the average sale price for October drops to $330,596.

“Low interest rates continued to support sales in some of Canada’s more active and expensive urban housing markets and factored into the monthly increase for national sales,” said Beth Crosbie., president of CREA, in a statement. “Even so, sales did not increase in many local markets in Canada, which shows that national and local housing market trends can be very different.”

For the sixth straight month sales rose and last month proved to be the strongest for October since 2009.

“While the strength of national sales activity is far from being a Canada-wide phenomenon, it extends beyond Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto,” said Gregory Klump, chief economist with CREA. “Sales in a number of B.C. markets have started to recover from weaker demand over the past couple of years. They have also been improving across much of Alberta, where interprovincial migration and international immigration are reaching new heights.”

Actual October sales were up 7% from a year and sales were up 70% of all local markets, led by Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, Victoria, Calgary, and Greater Toronto. Those five markets combined for 40% of the national sales activity.

For the first 10 months of the year, sales were now up 5.2% from a year ago and 2.5% above the 10-year average for the same period.

Source: Garry Marr, Financial Post

The average price of a home sold through the Multiple Listing Service last month was $419,699 – up 7.1 per cent from $391,931 in October 2013. That’s according to new numbers from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), which reports on the market each month.

Such high costs have many wondering whether it’s a good idea to buy and what they should watch out for.

While everyone’s decision-making process will be different, here are a few things worth considering when shopping for a home.

The market could fall

Many people who bought homes in Canada in the past decade have profited from rising house prices.

But home prices sometimes fall, says Paul Anglin, a real estate professor from the University of Guelph.

“Most people get excited about the rising part,” he says. “They forget about the falling part.”

Fresh in the minds of many is the 2008 U.S. housing market crash, which left millions of Americans with homes worth less than they had paid. Prices have mostly recovered, but many lost money in the meantime.

Markets have crashed in Canada, too. For example, from 1990 to 1996, prices dropped every year in Toronto.

Both The Bank of Canada and Moody’s have warned recently that a crash could happen again in Canada, especially if the economy slows down.

Local markets differ

Housing markets tracked by CREA vary widely by city. Prices are up 9.5 per cent year-over-year in Calgary, 8.3 per cent in the Greater Toronto Area and six per cent in Greater Vancouver.

However, they were flat in Saskatoon, Ottawa, Greater Montreal and Greater Moncton – and down 3.4 per cent in Regina.

The eye-popping increases in Toronto and Vancouver are likely because “lots of people want to move there and there’s limited space,” says Anglin.

Calgary is a different story, however, because it’s highly dependent on the success of the local oil extraction economy, which is tied to the global price of oil.

Although Calgary has been booming for years, global oil prices have recently started to fall. “If the price of oil stays low, then [a crash in Calgary] is exactly what you would expect,” says Anglin.

Transit lines can boost value

Living close to good rapid transit options can boost the value of a property for obvious reasons – people want the shortest possible commutes.

“You want to be in a place that is convenient – or that will be convenient,” says Anglin. In other words, don’t just consider existing transit lines, but also where proposed transit could be built.

Think about SmartTrack in Toronto or the Broadway Subway proposal in Vancouver.

“But you also need to figure out how much inconvenience there will be during construction phase,” says Anglin. Buyers who end up too close to a new train station might have to put up with years of dust and noise.

Buying an unbuilt home can be risky

Buying pre-construction can be appealing, because everything will be new once the home is done.

It can also be risky.

“If you’re buying from a plan, you don’t know what will actually be there,” says Anglin.

For example, those who buy a condo from a plan, do not know who else will be in the building, he says.

Some buildings have a large proportion of renters, who may be noisier or dirtier than owners who live in their homes.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that condo fees are more predictable after a building has been up and running for a few years, says Anglin.

And while buyers used to get a discount in exchange for the unpredictability, as TD Bank pointed out earlier this year, resale condos may now be a better deal.

How long do you plan to stay?

Potential buyers need to ask themselves how long they plan to stay, because the longer they are willing to stay, the lower the risk of being forced to sell when prices are low.

“If you plan to be in some place for a year, maybe you should be renting,” says Anglin.

“If you plan to be there for 10 years,” he says, “the monthly wiggles on the average price probably don’t matter, because 10 years from now, economic conditions will be very different.”

Source: Josh Dehaas, CTVNews.ca