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

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

The slowdown in Vancouver’s real estate market is one factor leading the Canadian Real Estate Association to cut its sales forecast for this year and next on Monday.

Vancouver’s sales numbers dropped 27.6 per cent — the second biggest drop in the country behind Halifax — in November 2012, compared to the same month last year, after tighter lending rules that came into force this summer. The average price is down 6.3 per cent for the same period to $682,215, while the MLS home price index is down 1.7 per cent from a year ago. The average price reflects the mix of sales, while the HPI reflects price changes for typical homes.

While BMO deputy chief economist Doug Porter said most cities across Canada would see a soft landing for their real estate markets, he called Vancouver a “rather obvious exception.”

“I don’t know that I’d call it a hard landing in Vancouver, but it’s definitely a bumpier landing than most cities in Canada are going through right now,” Porter said.

Meanwhile, it appears people thinking of selling their homes may be holding off, especially in Metro Vancouver, as the region saw the largest drop in the country for new listings.

New supply reached its lowest level in more than two years, CREA said.

“That may help avert a harder landing for prices because sellers do have the leeway to back off,” Porter said. “Fundamentally, I think that’s one of the reasons why the Canadian housing market is likely not going to have a hard landing because you’re not going to have a lot of motivated sellers — people aren’t going to be forced into it by rising interest rates or declining employment so they can take their time and wait for the market to stabilize.”

Source: Tracy Sherlock and Craig Wong, Vancouver Sun

The housing market continues to cool off in the Lower Mainland, as the number of home sales dropped to 10-year lows in the Vancouver area and average sale prices dipped across the region.

Year-over-year sales decreased nearly 29 per cent, from 2,360 home sales in November 2011 to 1,686 last month, according to the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board’s monthly report. The 28.6-per-cent decline includes detached and attached homes, as well as condominiums.

Sellers are now more likely to remove their homes from the market than drop their asking price, and buyers are expecting even lower prices, said board president Eugen Klein, leading to a stalemate.

“There’s a tug of war happening between buyers and sellers.”

November typically marks a slowdown in new listings and homeowners prefer to move in the spring, he said. But both sales and new listings are below the 10-year November averages of 2,420 and 2,758, respectively.

The benchmark price for a home in Greater Vancouver — which includes the Sunshine Coast, Bowen Island and Whistler — also fell to $596,900, a 4.5-per-cent drop since this year’s peak of $625,100 in May, and down 1.7 per cent compared to last November.

Those numbers represent a moderation of the formerly overheated housing market in Vancouver, but not a full-on correction to record-setting home prices in recent years, Klein said. The days of $100,000 monthly price increases in Richmond or the west end or West Vancouver might be over, but “after all of that, where a $400,000 house became a $900,000 house, we’re seeing a price adjustment of just over six per cent. We’re not going back to the (original) level.”

Of the nearly 15,000 homes for sale in the region, almost half were listed at less than $600,000. Last month, 273 of 1,686 home sales last month went for more than $1 million.

Klein pointed to the introduction by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty of new mortgage rules this summer as part of the reason for the slowdown: lenders can now only provide home equity loans of up to 80 per cent of the home value, down from 85 per cent, and a reduced amortization period from 30 to 25 years, which increases monthly mortgage payments.

The Fraser Valley Real Estate Board, which includes Surrey, also reported a 19-per-cent year-over-year decline in home sales.

Board president Scott Olson agreed home buyers are adjusting their price range. But he pointed out that some areas outside Vancouver — such as Abbotsford, Delta, central Surrey and Cloverdale — have seen the benchmark price for a detached home go up.

The region’s “bread-and-butter buyers” — young families buying homes in the $400,000 range — are still in the market.

“We could argue we’re actually saying thank you to Minister Flaherty for his rule changes,” Olson said. “We’re seeing a net migration in from people closer to the city because we’re more affordable.”

However, the average price has decreased 6.6 per cent since last year — from $473,550 to $442,200 — and the number of new listings on the board’s Multiple Listing Service has dropped 11 per cent compared to November 2011 and 32 per cent compared to last month, which the report described as the “slowest new listings in a decade.”

The benchmark price for a townhouse in the Fraser Valley dropped 1.5 per cent to $298,900, while the same for apartments increased 2.6 per cent to $202,800.

On average, it takes 59 days to sell a home in the area, up five days from November 2011. Townhouses were on the market 70 days and apartments 74 days, according to the real estate board.

Source: Zoe McKnight, Vancouver Sun

The number of sales may be down in multi-family developments, but buyers are still keen on new homes in highrises near transit lines, Colliers International’s most recent residential real estate report for Metro Vancouver found.

Three developments in particular — Station Square and Solo District, both in Burnaby, and MC2 in Vancouver — were bright spots in the report, which said that overall multi-family sales were down 15 per cent in the third quarter of 2012, to 1,899.

“This is the second consecutive quarter in which sales volumes have decreased. However, despite all the crash talk, the sales volume posted this quarter and year to date is evidence of sustained demand for new multi-family homes in the Metropolitan Vancouver market,” said Scott Brown, senior vice-president, Colliers Residential group.

He said demand in the resale market is softer than demand for presales because presales tend to attract investors, particularly if they are near transit and will be attractive to renters.

“The ones that are selling the fastest are on transit and appealing to investors,” Brown said. “The buyers are a little bit more concerned about the immediate, short-term future, but there still is demand there and their belief in the long-term fundamentals of the Vancouver market is why they’re investing in these properties.”

Station Square is a five-tower development in Burnaby near Metrotown that will be ready for occupation in 2015. Units were priced from $280,000 for a studio apartment up to $1.35 million for a penthouse suite.

The first building of 269 units is mostly sold out, after about three months of a soft opening and a public opening Oct. 20, said Greg Zayadi, director of sales and marketing for Anthem Properties, which is a partner of the Beedie Group on Station Square.

“The location is key,” Zayadi said, adding that buyers want to be close to SkyTrain and Metrotown. He said most of the buyers are what he calls “family investors”: people who are buying with the plan that someone in their family will eventually live in the suite. He said 40 per cent of buyers at Station Square already have an address in Burnaby, while 30 to 35 per cent have an address in Vancouver.

Although they have addresses in the Lower Mainland, those might be homes of relatives, Zayadi said.

“Approximately 70 per cent of highrise sales occurred at developments targeting the Chinese buyer. While it is evident that the Chinese buyer is not as active as in recent years, this purchaser group does continue to be the primary buyer in Vancouver and Burnaby,” the Colliers report states.

Realtor Sunny Lee, who sold seven units in Station Square, said most of the people he sold to were investors, and that some were buying for their children. He said he believes Station Square sold so well because it is very close to SkyTrain, but not so close that the noise is a factor.

He said this year he has sold more pre-sale new homes than re-sale homes, which is unusual for him.

“Buyers are concerned about the current market, but they still believe in the future,” Lee said, adding that people are looking for a good investment in this low-interest rate environment. “They want to put their money somewhere.”

He said buyers of pre-sales usually put between five and 10 per cent down when they sign the contract, then another five to 10 per cent about six months later, with the remainder due when they move in.

The Colliers report also mentioned Appia’s Solo District development in Brentwood as selling well.

Looking ahead, in the fourth quarter of 2012 two projects are expected to keep sales flowing: Mosaic’s Elizabeth, near Queen Elizabeth Park, and Intracorp’s MC2.

MC2 is a two-tower development on Marine Drive and Cambie Street in Vancouver, directly across the street from the Canada Line. There are 443 homes in 26-storey and 32-storey towers, with prices for one-bedroom suites starting at $259,000 and two-bedroom suites at $421,500. The project opened for sale Oct. 27 and since then has sold 347 homes, said Linda Chu, director of marketing for Rennie Marketing Systems, which is selling the project.

Brown said people downsizing from single-family homes are also driving multi-family sales. He said developers are starting to build larger multi-family units — bigger than 1,000 square feet — to appeal specifically to downsizers rather than investors.

The Colliers report calls for annual sales volumes of 10,500 multi-family units in 2012, with a similar amount projected for 2013.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says housing starts in Metro Vancouver are forecast to remain flat in 2013.

Although the 2012 sales numbers of multi-family units are down more than 10 per cent from 2011, 2012 stands to be the second-best year for multi-family sales since 2007, the Colliers report said.

“2011 was an outstanding year. 2012 is a very good year,” Brown said. “We think 2013 will be about the same.”

Source: Tracy Sherlock, Vancouver Sun

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The Greater Vancouver housing market saw a slight increase in the number of home sales, a slight reduction in the number of listings, and a slight decrease in home prices in October compared to the summer months. With those changes, the sales-to-active-listings ratio increased to 11 per cent in October from 8 per cent in September.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) reported 1,931 residential property sales of detached, attached and apartment properties on the region’s Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) in October, a 16.7 per cent decline compared to the 2,317 sales in October 2011 and a 27.4 per cent increase compared to the 1,516 home sales in September 2012.

October sales were 28.5 per cent below the 10-year October sales average of 2,700.

“Buyer demand increased slightly in October compared to the previous few months,” Sandra Wyant, REBGV president-elect said. “Overall conditions in today’s market remain in favour of buyers, with low interest rates, more choice, and less time pressure in terms of decision-making. This translates into a calmer atmosphere for those looking to buy a home and it places more onus on sellers to ensure their homes are priced to compete in today’s marketplace.”

New listings for detached, attached and apartment properties in Greater Vancouver totalled 4,323 in October. This represents a 1.2 per cent decline compared to October 2011 when 4,374 properties were listed for sale on the MLS® and an 18.8 per cent decline compared to the 5,321 new listings in September 2012.

At 17,370, the total number of residential property listings on the MLS® increased 12 per cent from this time last year and declined 5.3 per cent compared to September 2012.

Since reaching a peak of $625,100 in May, the MLS Home Price Index® (MLS HPI®) composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Greater Vancouver declined 3.4 per cent to $603,800 in October. This represents a 0.8 per cent decline compared to last year.

“There’ve been modest price changes since they peaked in the spring. The largest reductions have occurred in the areas and property types that experienced the biggest price increases over the last few years,” Wyant said.

Since hitting a record high in April, the benchmark price of a detached home on the Westside of Vancouver has declined 8.6 per cent while detached homes in Richmond and West Vancouver have seen declines of 6 per cent over the same time period.

Sales of detached properties in Greater Vancouver reached 790 in October, a decrease of 18.9 per cent from the 974 detached sales recorded in October 2011, and a 19.1 per cent decrease from the 976 units sold in October 2010. Since reaching a peak in May, the benchmark price for a detached property in Greater Vancouver has declined 4.1 per cent to $927,500.

Sales of apartment properties reached 803 in October 2012, a 16.2 per cent decrease compared to the 958 sales in October 2011, and a decrease of 18.4 per cent compared to the 984 sales in October 2010. Since reaching a peak in May, the benchmark price for an apartment property in Greater Vancouver has declined 2.9 per cent to $368,800.

Attached property sales in October 2012 totalled 338, an 11.5 per cent decrease compared to the 382 sales in October 2011, and a 10.3 per cent decrease from the 377 attached properties sold in October 2010. Since reaching a peak in April, the benchmark price for an attached property in Greater Vancouver has declined 2.9 per cent to $457,700.

Source: Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver